
















ECCE HOMO: 


A SURVEY OF THE 


LIFE AND WORK OF JESUS CHRIST. 


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Auctor nominis ejus Christus Tiberio imperitante per procuratorem Pontium 
Pilatum supplicio affectus erat. Tacit. Ann. 1 . 15. 


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BOSTON: 

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. 

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AUTHOR'S EDITION. 


It is the wish of the author that his arrangements for 
the publication of this book in America should not be 
interfered with. 


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University Press : 

John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, 



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PREFACE. 


Those who feel dissatisfied with the current con¬ 
ceptions of Christ, if they cannot rest content without 
a definite opinion, may find it necessary to do what 
to persons not so dissatisfied it seems audacious and 
perilous to do. They may be obliged to reconsider 
the whole subject from the begirning, and placing 
themselves in imagination at the time when he 
whom we call Christ bore no such name, but was 
simply, as St. Luke describes him, a young man 

of promise, popular with those who knew him and 

$ 

appearing to enjoy the Divine favor, to trace his 
biography from point to point, and accept those 
conclusions about him, not which church doctors 
or even apostles have sealed with their authority, 
but which the facts themselves, critically weighed, 
appear to warrant. 

This is what the present writer undertook to do 
for the satisfaction of his own mind, and because, 
after reading a good many books on Christ, he felt 
still constrained to confess that there was no his- 


( 3 > 


4 


PREFACE. 


torical character whose motives, objects, and feel¬ 
ings remained so incomprehensible to him. The 
inquiry which proved serviceable to himself may 
chance to be useful to others. 

What is now published is a fragment. No theolo¬ 
gical questions whatever are here discussed. Christ, 
as the creator of modern theology and religion, will 
make the subject of another volume, which, how¬ 
ever, the author does not hope to publish for some 
time to come. In the mean while he has endeavored 
to furnish an answer to the question, What was 
Christ’s object in founding the Society which is 
called by his name, and how is it adapted to attain 
that object? 


CONTENTS. 


FIRST PART. 

CHAP. PAGB 

I. The Baptist.7 

II. The Temptation. 15 

III. The Kingdom of God.24 

IV. Christ’s Royalty. 3 7 

V. Christ’s Credentials. 49 

VI. Christ’s Winnowing Fan. 61 

VII. Conditions of Membership in Christ’s 

Kingdom .78 

VIII. Baptism. 94 

IX. Reflections on the Nature of 

Christ’s Society.100 

SECOND PART. 

CHRIST’S LEGISLATION . 

X. Christ’s Legislation compared with 

Philosophic Systems.11S 

XI. The Christian Republic. 132 

XII. Universality of the Christian Re¬ 
public .139 














VI 


CONTENTS. 


OHAl\ PAGE 

XIII. The Christian a Law to Himself . 155 

XIV. The Enthusiasm of Humanity . 169 

XV. The Lord’s Supper ...... 186 

XVI. Positive Morality. 195 

XVII. The Law of Philanthropy . . . 206 S 

XVIII The Law of Edification .... 220 

XIX. The Law of Mercy. 245 

XX. The Law of Mercy (continued ) . 262 

XXI. The Law of Resentment . . . 279 

XXII. The Law of Forgiveness .... 303 
XXIII. The Law of Forgiveness ( continued ) 324 
XXIV Conclusion. 339 






ECCE HOMO. 

FIRST PART. 

CHAPTER I. 

THE BAPTIST. 

T 1 IE Christian Church sprang from a move¬ 
ment which was not begun by Christ. When he 
appeared upon the scene the first wave of this move¬ 
ment had already passed over the surface of the Jew¬ 
ish nation. He found their hearts recently stirred 
by thoughts and hopes which prepared them to listen 
to his words. It is indeed true that not Judasa only 
but the whole Roman Empire was in a condition 
singularly favorable to the reception of a doctrine and 
an organization such as that of the Christian Church. 
The drama of ancient society had been played out; 
the ancient city life, with the traditions and morality 
belonging to it, was obsolete ; a vast empire, built 
upon the ruins of so many nationalities and upon the 
disgrace of so many national gods, demanded new 
usages and new objects of worship; a vast peace, 
where war between neighboring cities had been the 
accustomed condition of life and the only recognized 



8 


ECCE HOMO. 


teacher of virtue, called for a new morality. There 
was a clear stage, as it afterwards appeared, for a 
Universal Church. But Palestine was not only ready 
to receive such an innovation, but prepared, even 
before the predestined Founder appeared, to make 
more or less abortive essays towards it. At the 
moment of his almost unobserved entrance, the whole 
nation were intent upon the career of one who was 
attempting in an imperfect manner that which Christ 
afterwards fully accomplished. 

It was the glory of John the Baptist to have success¬ 
fully revived the function of the prophet. For several 
centuries the function had remained in abeyance. It 
had become a remote, though it was still a fondly 
cherished, tradition that there had been a time when 
the nation had received guidance from commissioned 
representatives of its invisible King. We possess still 
the utterances of many of these prophets, and when 
we consider the age in which they were delivered, w r e 
can clearly perceive that no more precious treasure 
was ever bestowed upon a nation than these oracles 
of God which were committed to the Jews. They 
unite in what was then the most effective way all that 
is highest in poetry and most fundamental in political 
science with what is most practical in philosophy and 
most inspiring in religion. But prophecy was one of 
those gifts which, Like poetry or high art, are particu¬ 
larly apt to die out under change of times. Several 
centuries had succeeded each other which w r ere all 
alike incapable of producing it. When John the 
Baptist appeared, not the oldest man in Palestine 
could remember to have spoken even in his earliest 


THE BAPTIM . 


9 


childhood with any man who had seen a prophet, 
The ancient scrolls remained, as amongst ourselves 
those Gothic cathedrals remain, of which we may 
produce more or less faithful imitations, but to the 
number of which we shall never add another. In 
these circumstances it was an occurrence of the first 
magnitude, more important far than war or revolution, 
when a new prophet actually appeared. John the 
Baptist defied all the opposition of those scribes , who 
in the long silence of the prophetic inspiration had 
become the teachers of the nation, and who resisted 
him with the conservatism of lawyers united to the 
bigotry of priests. He made his way back to the 
hidden fountains, and received at last that national 
acknowledgment which silenced even these profes* 
sional jealousies, that irresistible voice of the people 
in which the Jew was accustomed to hear the voice of 
God. Armed with the prophetic authority, he under¬ 
took a singular enterprise, of which probably most of 
those who witnessed it died without suspecting the 
importance, but which we can see to have been the 
foundation of the Universal Church. 

There may have been many who listened with awe 
to his prophetic summons, and presented themselves 
as candidates for his baptism in implicit faith that the 
ordinance was divine, who nevertheless in after years 
asked themselves what purpose it had served. It was 
a solemn scene doubtless, when crowds from every 
part of Palestine gathered by the side of Jordan, and 
there renewed, as it were, the covenant made between 
their ancestor and Jehovah. It seemed the beginning 
of a new age, the restoration of the ancient theocracy, 


IO 


ECCE HOMO. 


the final close of that dismal period in which the race 
had lost its peculiarity, had taken a varnish of Greek 
manners, and had contributed nothing but a few dull 
chapters of profane history, filled with the usual chaos 
of faction fights, usurpations, royal crimes, and out¬ 
breaks, blind and brave, of patriotism and the love of 
liberty. But many of those who witnessed the scene 
and shared in the enthusiasm which it awakened must 
have remembered it in later days as having inspired 
hopes which had not been realized. It must have 
seemed to many that the theocracy had not in fact 
been restored, that the old routine had been inter¬ 
rupted only for a moment, that the baptized nation 
had speedily contracted new pollution, and that no 
deliverance had been wrought from the ‘ wrath to 
come.’ And they may have asked in doubt, Is God 
so little parsimonious of His noblest gift, as to waste 
upon a doomed generation that which He did not 
vouchsafe to many nobler generations that had pre¬ 
ceded them, and to send a second and far greater 
Elijah to prophesy in vain? 

But if there were such persons, they were ignorant 
of one important fact. John the Baptist was like the 
Emperor Nerva. In his career it was given him 
to do two things—to inaugurate a new regime, and 
also to nominate a successor who was far greater than 
himself. And by this successor his work was taken 
up, developed, completed, and made permanent; so 
that, however John may have seemed to his own gen¬ 
eration to have lived in vain, and those scenes on the 
banks of Jordan to have been the delusive promise of 
a future that was never to be, at the distance of neai 


THE BAPTIST. 


11 


two thousand years he appears not less but far greater 
than he appeared to his contemporaries, and all that 
his baptism promised to do appears utterly insignifi¬ 
cant compared with what it has actually done. 

The Baptist addressed all who came to him in the 
same stern tone of authority. Young and old gath¬ 
ered round him, and among them must have been 
many whom he had known in earlier life, and some to 
whom he had been taught to look up with humility 
and respect. But in his capacity’ of prophet he made 
no distinction. All alike he exhorted to repentance ; 
all alike he found courage to baptize. In a single 
case, however, his confidence failed him. There 
appeared among the candidates a young man of 
nearly his own age, who was related to his family. 
We must suppose that he had had personal inter¬ 
course with Christ before; for though one of our 
authorities represents John as saying that he knew 
him not except by the supernatural sign that pointed 
him out at his baptism, yet we must interpret this 
as meaning only that he did not before know him 
for his successor. For it appears that before the 
appearance of the sign John had addressed Christ 
with expressions of reverence, and had declared him¬ 
self unfit to baptize him. After this meeting we are 
told that on several occasions he pointed out Christ as 
the hope of the nation, as destined to develop the 
work he himself had begun into something far more 
memorable, and as so greatly superior to himself, that, 
to repeat his emphatic words, he was not worthy to 
untie his shoe. 

Now, before we enter into an examination of Christ’s 


ECCE HOMO. 


ia 

own public career, it will be interesting to conside; 
what definite qualities this contemporary and sagacious 
observer remarked in him, and exactly what he ex¬ 
pected him to do. The Baptist’s opinion of Christ’s 
character then is summed up for 11s in the title he gave 
him —* the Lamb of God taking away the sins of the 
world. There seems to be in the last part of this de¬ 
scription an allusion to the usages of the Jewish sacri¬ 
ficial system, and in order to explain it fully it would 
be necessary to anticipate much that will come more 
conveniently later in this treatise. But when we re¬ 
member that the Baptist’s mind was doubtless full of 
imagery drawn from the Old Testament, and that the 
conception of a lamb of God makes the subject of 
one of the most striking of the Psalms, we shall per 
ceive what he meant to convey by this phrase. The 
Psalmist describes himself as one of Jehovah’s flock, 
safe under His care, absolved from all anxieties by the 
sense of His protection, and gaining from this confi¬ 
dence of safety the leisure to enjoy without satiety all 
the simple pleasures which make up life, the freshness 
of the meadow, the coolness of the stream. It is the 
most complete picture of happiness that ever was or 
can be drawn. It represents that state of mind lor 
which all alike sigh, and the want of which makes 
life a failure to most; it represents that Heaven which 
is everywhere if we could but enter it, and yet almost 
nowhere because so few of us can. The tw r o or three 
who win it may be called victors in life’s conflict; to 
them belongs the regnum et diadema tutum. They 
may pass obscure lives in humble dwellings, or like 
Fra Angelico in a narrow monastic cell, but they are 


THE BAPTIST. 


vexed with no flap of unclean wings about the ceiling. 
From some such humble dwelling Christ came to 
receive the prophet’s baptism. The Baptist was no 
lamb of God. He was a wrestler with life, one to 
whom peace of mind does not come easily, but only 
after a long struggle. His restlessness had driven him 
into the desert, where he had contended for years with 
thoughts he could not master, and from whence he 
had uttered his startling alarum to the nation. He 
was among the dogs rather than among the lambs of 
the Shepherd. He recognized the superiority of him 
whose confidence had never been disturbed, whose 
steadfast peace no agitations of life had ever ruffled. 
He did obeisance to the royalty of inward happiness. 

One who was to earn the name of Saviour of man¬ 
kind had need of this gift more than of any other. 
Fie who was to reconcile God and man needed to be 
first at peace himself. The door of heaven, so to 
speak, can be opened only from within. Such then 
was the impression of Christ’s character which the 
Baptist formed. What now did he exjiect him to do? 

He said that Christ bore a fan in his hand, with 
which he would winnow the nation, gathering the 
good around him, separating and rejecting the bad. 
We shall find occasion soon to speak of this more 
particularly ; at present let us remark that it shows us 
what course the Baptist imagined that the movement 
he had commenced would take. He had renewed the 
old theocratic covenant with the nation. But not all 
the nation was fit to remain in such a covenant. A 
sifting was necessary; from the approaching downfall 
of the Jewish nationality, from the wrath to come, an 


ECCE HOMO. 


r 4 

election should be rescued who should perpetuate 
the covenant. It is superfluous to remark how just 
this anticipation was, and how precisely it describes 
Christ’s work, which consisted in collecting all the 
better spirits of the nation, and bringing them under 
that revised covenant which we call Christianity, and 
which survived and diffused itself after the fall of the 
Temple. 

Further, Christ was to baptize with a holy spirit 
and with fire. John felt his own baptism to have 
something cold and negative about it. It was a re¬ 
nouncing of definite bad practices. The soldier 
bound himself to refrain from violence, the tax-gath¬ 
erer from extortion. But more than this was wanting. 
It was necessary that an enthusiasm should be kindled. 
The phrase 4 baptize with fire 9 seems at first sight to 
contain a mixture of metaphors. Baptism means 
cleansing, and fire means warmth. How can warmtn 
cleanse? The answer is, that moral warmth does 
cleanse. No heart is pure that is not passionate ; no 
virtue is safe that is not enthusiastic. And such an 
enthusiastic virtue Christ was to introduce. The 
whole of the present volume will be a comment on 
this text. 


*5 


CHAPTER II. 

THE TEMPTATION. 

L ET us delay a few more moments on the threshold 
of our subject, while we consider an incident 
which is said to have occurred just before Christ 
entered upon the work of his life. 

Signs miraculous or considered miraculous are said 
to have attested the greatness of Christ’s mission at 
the moment of his baptism. There settled on his 
head a dove, in which the Baptist saw a visible incar¬ 
nation of that Holy Spirit with which he declared that 
Christ should baptize. A sound was heard in the sky 
which was interpreted as the voice of God Himself, 
acknowledging His beloved Son. In the agitation of 
mind caused by his baptism, by the Baptist’s designa¬ 
tion of him as the future prophet, and by these signs, 
Christ retired into the wilderness; and there in soli¬ 
tude, and after a mental struggle such as John per¬ 
il aps had undergone before he appeared as the prophet 
of the nation, matured that plan of action which we 
see him executing with the firmest assurance and con¬ 
sistency from the moment of his return to society. A 
particular account, also involving some miraculous 
circumstances, of the temptations with which he con¬ 
tended successfully in the wilderness, is given in oui 
biographies. 


i6 


ECCE HOMO. 


Miracles are, in themselves, extremely improbable 
tilings, and cannot be admitted unless supported by a 
great concurrence of evidence. For some of the 
Evangelical miracles there is a concurrence of evi¬ 
dence which, when fairly considered, is very great 
indeed; for example, for the Resurrection, for the 
appearance of Christ to St. Paul, for the general fact 
that Christ was a miraculous healer of disease. The 
evidence by which tiiese facts are supported cannot be 
tolerably accounted for by any hypothesis except that 
of their being true. And if they are once admitted, 
the antecedent improbability of many miracles less 
strongly attested is much diminished. Nevertheless 
nothing' is more natural than that exaggerations and 
even inventions should be mixed in our biographies 
with genuine facts. Now the miracles of the baptism 
are not among those which are attested by strong 
external evidence. There is nothing necessarily mi¬ 
raculous in the appearance of the dove, and a peal of 
thunder might be shaped into intelligible words by the 
excited imagination of men accustomed to consider 
thunder as the voice of God. Of the incidents of the 
temptation it is to be remarked that they are not 
described to us by eye-witnesses ; they may have been 
communicated to his followers by Christ himself, the 
best of witnesses, but we have no positive assurance 
that they were so communicated. 

On the other hand, a retirement of Christ into the 
desert, and a remarkable mental struggle at the begin¬ 
ning of his career, are incidents extremely probable 
in themselves; and the account of the temptation, 
from whatever source derived, has a very striking 


THE TEMPTATION. 


*7 


internal consistency, a certain inimitable probability 
of improbability, if the expression may be allowed. 
That popular imagination which gives birth to rumors 
and then believes them, is not generally capable of 
great or sublime or well-sustained efforts. 

Wunieithatige Bilder sind meist nur schlechte Gemalde . 1 

The popular imagination is fertile and tenacious, but 
not very powerful or profound. Christ in the wilder¬ 
ness was a subject upon which the imagination would 
very readily work, but at the same time far too great a 
subject for it to work upon successfully ; we should ex¬ 
pect strange stories to be told of his adventures in such 
a solitude, but we should also expect the stories to be 
very childish. Now the story of Christ’s temptation is 
as unique as Christ’s character. It is such a tempta¬ 
tion as was never experienced by any one else, yet just 
such a temptation as Christ, and Christ in those pecu¬ 
liar circumstances, might be expected to experience. 
And further, this appropriateness of all the circum¬ 
stances hardly seems to be perceived by the Evange¬ 
lists themselves who narrate them. Their narrative 
is not like a poem, though it affords the materials for 
a poem ; it is rather a dry chronicle. 

Let us consider the situation. We are to fix in our 
minds Christ’s peculiar character, as it has been gath¬ 
ered from the Baptist’s description of him. His char¬ 
acter then was such that he was compared to a lamb, 
a lamb of God. He was without ambition, and he 
had a peculiar, unrivalled simplicity of devout confi¬ 
dence in God. Such is the person to whom it is now 
announced by a great prophet that he has been called 


ECCE HOMO. 


I S 

% 

to a most peculiar, a preeminent career. But this 
does not fully describe the situation; a most important 
circumstance has yet to be mentioned. From the time 
of his temptation, Christ appeared as a worker of 
miracles. We are expressly told by St. John that he 
had wrought none before, but all our authorities con¬ 
cur in representing him as possessing and using the 
gift after this time. We are to conceive him therefore 
as becoming now for the first time conscious of mirac¬ 
ulous powers. Now none of our biographies point 
this out, and yet it is visibly the key to the whole nar¬ 
ration. What is called Christ’s temptation is the ex¬ 
citement of his mind which was caused by the nascent 
consciousness of supernatural power. 

He finds himself in a barren region without food. 
The tumult of his mind has hitherto kept him uncon¬ 
scious of his bodily wants, but the overwhelming reac¬ 
tion of lassitude now comes on. And with the hunger 
comes the temptation, ‘ Son of God, into whose ser¬ 
vice all natural forces have been given, command that 
these stones become bread.’ The possession of special 
power, and nothing else, constitutes the temptation 
here; it is the greatest with which virtue can be as¬ 
sailed. By it the virtuous man is removed from ordi¬ 
nary rules, from the safe course which has been marked 
by the footsteps of countless good men before him, 
and has to make, as it were, a new morality for him¬ 
self. In difficult circumstances few men can wield 
extraordinary power long without positively commit¬ 
ting crime. But here we see the good man placed in a 
position utterly strange, deprived of the stay of all pre¬ 
cedent or example, gifted with power not only extraor- 


THE TEMPTATION. 


} 9 


ehnary but supernatural and unlimited, and thrown 
lor his morality entirely upon the instinct cf viitue 
within him. Philosophers had imagined son e such 
situation, and had presented it under the fable of the 
ring of Gyges, but with them the only question was 
whether distinctions of right and wrong would not 
vanish altogether in such circumstances. The ques¬ 
tion by which Christ’s mind was perplexed was far 
different; it was what newer .and stricter obligations 
are involved in the possession of new powers. 

A strange, and yet, given the exceptional circum¬ 
stances, a most natural and necessary temptation. 
Still more unique, and yet at the same time natural, is 
Christ’s resistance to it. Unique by its elevation, and 
natural by its ajDpropriateness to his character. He is 
awe-struck rather than elated by his new gifts ; he de¬ 
clines to use for his own convenience what he regards 
as a sacred deposit committed to him for the good of 
others. In his extreme need he prefers to suffer rather 
than to help himself from resources which he con¬ 
ceives placed in his hands in trust for the kingdom of 
God. Did ever inventor or poet dare to picture to 
himself a self-denial like this? But, on the other hand, 
what course could so exactly suit the character of 
Christ as the Baptist painted it? What answer could 
more exquisitely become the Lamb of God than that 
quotation — ‘Man doth not live by bread only, but by 
every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God ’ ? 
Is it not substantially the same as that which the 
Psalmist uses in the very psalm in which he pictures 
himself as one of God’s lambs, ‘ Pie prepareth for me 
a table in the wilderness’? 


20 


ECCE HOMO. 


Then follows a temptation, which again is extremely 
appropriate, because it is founded upon this 'very con¬ 
fidence of Divine protection. A new temptation arises 
by reaction out of the triumph of faith : 4 Throw thy 
self down, for it is written, He shall give His angels 
charge over thee, and in their hands they shall bear 
thee up.’ To no other person but Christ could such a 
temptation occur; to him, we may boldly say, such a 
temptation must , at some time, have occurred. And 
if in the Son of God there was filial reverence as well 
as filial confidence, it must have been resisted, as it is 
lecorded to have been resisted, 4 Thou shalt not tempt 
the Lord thy God.’ 

The third temptation is somewhat less easy to un¬ 
derstand, but its appropriateness to the character and 
condition of Christ, and its utter inappropriateness to 
every other character and condition, are quite as clear. 
A vision of universal monarchy rose before him. 
What suggested such thoughts to the son of a carpen¬ 
ter? What but the same new sense of supernatural 
po wer which tempted him to turn stones into bread, 
and to throw himself into the arms of ministering 
angels? This, together with the Baptist’s predictions, 
and those Messianic predictions of the ancient proph¬ 
ets, on which we can imagine that he had been in¬ 
ter sely brooding, might naturally suggest such an 
imagination. He pictured himself enthroned in Jeru¬ 
salem as Messiah, and the gold of Arabia offered in 
tribute to him. But, says the narrative, the devil said 
to Hi?n , If thou wilt fall down and worship me , 
all shall be thine . This, at least, it may be thought, 
was not a temptation likely to overcome the Lamb of 


THE TEMPTATION. 


21 


God. One remarkable for simplicity of character, one 
who was struggling with the fresh conviction that he 
was himself that Messiah, that beloved Son of God, 
whose glorious reign wise men had been permitted to 
foresee from a distance of centuries; was he, in the 
moment of his first enthusiasm, and fresh in the pos¬ 
session of sacred prerogatives of power, which he 
feared to use in self-defence even against famine, 
likely to do homage to a spirit of evil for that which 
he must have believed to be surely his by gift of God? 
We should remember that the report of these tempta¬ 
tions, if trustworthy, must have come to us through 
Christ himself, and that it may probably contain the 
facts mixed with his comments upon them. We are 
perhaps to understand that he was tempted to do 
something which on reflection appeared to him 
equivalent to an act of homage to the evil spirit. 
What then could this be ? It will explain much that 
follows in Christ’s life, and render the whole story 
very complete and consistent, if we suppose that what 
he was tempted to do was to employ force in the estab¬ 
lishment of his Messianic kingdom. On this hypothe¬ 
sis, the third temptation arises from the same source 
as the others ; the mental struggle is still caused by the 
question how to use the supernatural power. Nothing 
more natural than that it should occur to Christ that 
this power was expressly given to him for the purpose 
of establishing, in defiance of all resistance, his ever¬ 
lasting kingdom. He must have heard from his in¬ 
structors that the Messiah was to put all enemies under 
his feet, and to crush all opposition by irresistible God- 
given might This certainly was the general expecta* 


22 


ECCE HOMO. 


tion ; this appeared legibly written in the prophetical 
books. And. in the sequel, it was because Christ 
refused to use ms supernatural power in this way that 
his countrymen rejected him. It was not that they 
expected a king, and that he appeared only as a 
teacher; on the contrary, he systematically described 
himself as a king. The stumbling-block was this, 
that, professing to be a king, he declined to use the 
weapons of force and compulsion that belong to 
kings. And as this caused so much surprise to his 
countrymen, it is natural that he should himself have 
undergone a struggle before he determined thus to run 
counter to the traditional theory of the Messiah and to 
all the prejudices of the nation. The tempter, we may 
suppose, approached him with the whisper, ‘ Gird 
thee with thy sword upon thy thigh ; ride on, and thy 
right hand shall teach thee terrible things.’ 

If this was the temptation, then again how charac¬ 
teristic of the Lamb of God was the resistance to it, 
and at the same time how incomparably great the self- 
restraint involved in that resistance! One who be¬ 
lieves himself born for universal monarchy, and 
capable by his rule of giving happiness to the world, 
is intrusted with powers which seem to afford the 
ready means of attaining that supremacy. By the 
overwhelming force of visible miracle it is possible foi 
him to establish an absolute dominion, and to give to 
the race the laws which may make it happy. But he 
deliberately determines to adopt another course, to 
found his empire upon the consent and not the fears 
of mankind, to trust himself with his royal claims and 
his terrible purity and superiority defenceless among 


THE TEMPTATION. 


23 


mankind, and, however bitterly their envy may perse¬ 
cute him, to use his supernatural powers only in doing 
them good. This he actually did, and evidently in 
pursuance of a fixed plan; he persevered in this 
course, although politically, so to speak, it was fatal 
to his position, and though it bewildered his most 
attached followers ; but by doing so he raised himself 
to a throne on which he has been seated for nigh two 
thousand years, and gained an authority over men 
greater far than they have allowed to any legislator, 
greater than prophecy had ever attributed to the 
Messiah himself. 

As the time of his retirement in the wilderness was 
Tie season in which we may suppose the plan of his 
subsequent career was formed, and the only season in 
which he betrayed any hesitation or mental perplexity, 
jt is natural to suppose that he formed this particular 
determination at this time ; and, if so, the narrative 
gains completeness and consistency by the hypothesis 
that the act of homage to the evil spirit to which 
Christ was tempted, was the founding his Messianic 
kingdom upon force. 

Such then is the story of Christ’s temptation. It 
rests, indeed, on no very strong external evidence, and 
there may be exaggeration in its details; but in its 
substance it can scarcely be other than true, first, 
because it is so much stranger than fiction, and next, 
because in its strangeness it is so nicely adapted to the 
character of Christ as we already know it, and still 
more as it will unfold itself to us in the course of this 
investigation 


CHAPTER III. 


THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 

I T is the object of the present treatise to exhibit 
Christ’s career in outline. No other career ever 
had so much unity; no other biography is so simple, 
or can so well afford to dispense with details. Men 
in general take up scheme after scheme, as circum¬ 
stances suggest one or another, and therefore most 
biographies are compelled to pass from one subject 
to another, and to enter into a multitude of minute 
questions, to divide the life carefully into periods by 
chronological landmarks accurately determined, to 
trace the gradual development of character and ripen¬ 
ing or change of opinions. But Christ formed one 
plan and executed it; no important change took place 
in his mode of thinking, speaking, or acting; at least 
the evidence before us does not enable us to trace any 
such change. It is possible, indeed, for students of 
his life to find details which they may occupy them¬ 
selves with discussing; they may map out the chro¬ 
nology of it, and devise methods of harmonizing the 
different accounts; but such details are of little 
importance compared with the one grand question, 
what was Christ’s plan, and throw scarcely any light 
upon that question. What was Christ’s plan, is the 
main question which will be investigated in the 


THE KINGDOM OF GOD 


2 5 


present treatise, and that vision of universal monar¬ 
chy which we have just been considering affords an 
appropriate introduction to it. 

In discussing that vision we were obliged to antici¬ 
pate. Let us now inquire as a new question, what 
course Christ adopted when he mingled once more 
with his fellow-countrymen after his seclusion in the 
wilderness, and when he entered upon his public 
career? John’s message to the nation had been, as 
we have seen, 4 The kingdom of God is at hand.’ 
Now this proclamation Christ took up from his 
lips and carried everywhere. For a while the two 
prophets worked simultaneously, though, as it seems, 
separately, and the preaching of the one was an echo 
of that of the other. Our first object, then, must be 
to ascertain what it was which they anticipated under 
the name of the kingdom of God. And to ascertain 
this w r e should not look onward to that which actually 
took place, but placing ourselves in imagination among 
their audience, consider what meaning a Jew would 
be likely to attach to the proclamation they delivered. 
The conception of a kingdom of God was no new 
one, but familiar to every Jew. Every Jew looked 
back to the time when Jehovah was regarded as the 
King of Israel. The title had belonged to Jehovah 
in a very peculiar sense ; it had not been transferred to 
Him from the visible earthly king as in many other 
countries, but appropriated to Him so exclusively that 
for a long time no human king had been appointed, 
and that -when at: last the people demanded to be ruled 
by kings like the nations around them, the demand 
was treated by the most ardent worshippers of Jehovah 

2 


26 


ECCE HOMO. 


as high treason against Him. And though a dynasty 
was actually founded, yet the belief in the true royalty 
of Jehovah was not destroyed or weakened, only 
modified by the change. Every nation of originality 
has its favorite principles, its political intuitions, 
to which it clings with fondness. One nation ad¬ 
mires free speech and liberty, another the equality 1 
of all citizens; just in the same manner the Jews 
attached themselves to the principle of the Sover¬ 
eignty of God, and believed the happiness of the 
nation to depend upon its free acknowledgment of 
this principle. But in the time of Christ all true 
Jews were depressed with the feeling that the theoc¬ 
racy was in a great degree a thing of the past, that 
they were in a new age with new things about them, 
that Greek and Roman principles and ways of think¬ 
ing were in the ascendant, and that the face of the 
Invisible King no longer shone full upon them. This 
feeling had become so deep and habitual, that at a 
much earlier time the sect of the Pharisees had been 
formed to preserve the peculiarity of the nation from 
the inroad of foreign thought, and whatever ancient 
Jewish feeling remained had gathered itself into this 
sect as into a last citadel. In these circumstances the 
cry, the kingdom of God is at hand, could not be mis¬ 
taken. It meant that the theocracy was to be restored, 
that the nation was called to commence a new era by 
falling back upon its first principles. 

In making this proclamation John and Christ did 
not assume any new character. They revived the 
obsolete function of the prophet, and did for their 
generation what a Samuel and an Elijah had done for 


THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 


27 


theirs. As every great nation has its favorite political 
principles, so it has its peculiar type of statesmen. 
The nation which strives after individual liberty pro¬ 
duces statesmen whose principal qualities are personal 
independence, moral courage, and a certain skill in 
quairelling by rule. The pursuit of equality produces 
men of commanding will, who are able to crush 
aristocratical insolence, and by ruling the country 
themselves to prevent the citizens from tyrannizing 
over each other. In like manner the peculiar political 
genius of the Jews produced a peculiar type of states¬ 
men. The man who rose to eminence in that com¬ 
monwealth was the man who had a stronger sense 
than others of the presence, power, and justice of the 
Invisible King, and his great function was to awaken 
the same sense in others by eloquent words and de¬ 
cided acts. The Jewish statesman was the prophet, 
and his business was to redeliver to each successive 
generation, in the language likely to prove most con¬ 
vincing and persuasive to it, a proclamation of which 
the meaning always was, ‘ the kingdom of God is at 
hand.’ The occasion of such proclamation might be 
peculiar and determine it to a peculiar form, but one 
general description of the Jewish prophet will apply 
to all of them, including John and Christ, viz. that he 
is one who, foreseeing the approach of great national 
calamities and attributing them to the nation’s dis¬ 
loyalty to their Invisible King, devotes himself to the 
task of averting them by a reformation of manners 
and an emphatic republication of the Mosaic Law. 
All the Jewish prophets answer this description, 
whether the calamity they foresee be a plague of 


28 


ECCE HOMO. 


locusts, an Assyrian invasion, a Babylonish captivity, 
or a Roman conquest with the abomination of desola¬ 
tion standing in the holy place. 

So far all prophets must of necessity resemble each 
other, but theie are other matters in which it is equally 
necessary that they should differ. All prophets pro¬ 
claim one eternal principle, and so far are alike ; but 
as it is their duty to apply the principle to the special 
conditions of their age, they must needs differ as much 
as those conditions differ. As the prophet whose 
prophecy is new in substance is no prophet, but a de¬ 
ceiver, so the prophet whose prophecy is old in form 
is no prophet, but a plagiarist. And thus if the re¬ 
vived theocracy of Christ had been simply and merely 
the theocracy of Moses or David, his countrymen 
would have had as good a right to deny his prophetic 
mission as if he had preached no theocracy at all. 
To express the same thing in the language of our own 
time, the destinies of a nation cannot be safely trusted 
to a politician who does not recognize the difference 
between the present and the past, and who hopes to 
restore the precise institutions under which the nation 
had prospered centuries before. It is therefore most 
important to inquire under what form Christ proposed 
to revive the theocracy. 

VVe have remarked that the ancient theocracy had 
passed through two principal stages. In the first the 
sense of Jehovah’s sovereignty had been so absorbing 
that it had been thought impious to give the name of 
king to any human being. It is true that in this stage 
the notion of a human representative of Jehovah had 
been familiar to the nation. In their dangers and 


THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 


2 9 


difficulties, when the sighs of the people were heard 
in heaven, the hand of Jehovah had seemed to them 
as mighty, and Ilis arm as visibly outstretched, when 
lie sent rescue through a legislator or judge in whom 
Ilis wisdom dwelt as when He divided the sea by 
immediate power. God’s presence in men had been 
recognized as fully as His presence in nature. 4 When 
the people come to me to inquire of God ,’ is a phrase 
used by Moses. But it had been held impossible to 
predict beforehand in what man God’s presence would 
manifest itself. The divine inspiration which made a 
man capable of ruling had been considered to resem¬ 
ble that which made a man a prophet, or makes in 
these days a poet or inspired artist. And it was 
thought that to give a man the title of a king for life, 
and to transfer it regularly to his descendants without 
demanding proofs that the divine wisdom remained 
and descended with equal regularity, was equivalent 
to depriving Jehovah of His power of choosing His 
own ministers. 

For a long time, therefore, a system of hero-worship 
prevailed. Whenever the need of a central govern¬ 
ment was strongly felt, it was committed to the man 
who appeared ablest and wisest. At length, however, 
the wish of the people for a government that might 
be permanent, that might hold definite prerogatives 
and be transferred according to a fixed rule, grew 
clamorous. Prophecy protested solemnly, but at last 
yielded, and an hereditary monarchy was founded. 
From this time foiward until the Babylonish captivitv 
Judaea was under the government of Jehovah repre¬ 
sented by a king of the house of David. This new 


3° 


KCCK HOMO. 


constitution had all the advantages which we know to 
attach to hereditary monarchy. The nation gained 
from it a tranquillity and security which were not 
interrupted, as before, at the death of each ruler, and 
the national pride and patriotism were fostered by the 
splendor and antiquity of its royal house. But the 
spirit of prophecy, which had at first protested against 
the change, continued to be somewhat perplexed by 
ihe new institution. The king, it reasoned, if he was 
not then a usurper of Jehovah’s right, what was he ? 
Could the country have two kings, and could loyalty 
to the one be reconciled with loyalty to the other? 
From this perplexity it found an escape by picturing 
the earthly king as standing in a peculiar relation to 
the heavenly. If the inspired hero or legislator of 
early times had been a favored servant of Jehovah, the 
king must needs be more. He who, not on some 
special occasion but always, represented Jehovah, he 
who reflected not only His wisdom or justice but His 
very majesty and royalty in the presence of His sub¬ 
jects, the assessor of Jehovah’s throne, the man that 
was the fellow of the Lord of Hosts, deserved to be 
called not His servant but His Son. But the more 
the dignity of a Jewish king appeared unutterable, 
the more unworthy of it did almost every individual 
king appear. The ancient judge had been all that he 
professed to be. His special endowment might be of 
a mean order, but it was undeniable. No one ques¬ 
tioned the stoutness of Samson’s sinews. But the 
king, of whom so much more was expected, might 
happen and did sometimes happen to have much less. 
The spirit of prophecy consoled itself for these fail- 


THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 


3 1 


ures by painting upon the future such a king as might 
satisfy all the conditions its enthusiasm demanded, 
and might deserve to sit by Jehovah’s right hand and 
judge the chosen people. 

These were the two forms which the ancient the¬ 
ocracy had assumed. Now under which form did 
Christ propose to revive it? The vision of universal 
monarchy which he saw in the desert suggests the 
answer. He conceived the theocracy- restored as it 
had been in the time of David, with a visible monarch 
at its head, and that monarch himself. 

We are concerned at present simply with the fact 
that Christ laid claim to the royal title, and not with 
the question what special powers he claimed under 
that title. The fact itself cannot be denied without 
rejecting all the evidence before us. His biographers 
regard him as king by hereditary right, and attach 
great importance to the proofs of his lineal descent 
from David. It does not appear, and it is not easy to 
believe, that he shared this feeling. But if not, it was 
because he believed his royalty to rest on a higher 
right. He could not derive honor from David because 
he held himself far greater than David. He was not 
king by a title derived from his ancestor, but by the 
same title as his ancestor. David had owed his sover¬ 
eignty to that heroic will and wisdom in which the 
prophet Samuel had recognized a divine right to rule. 
The same title had Christ in a yet higher degree, and 
it had been recognized and proclaimed with equal 
solemnity by the greatest prophetic authority' of the 
age. The prophetic designation which had fallen 
upon him had perhaps revealed to himself for the first 


3 2 


ECCE HOMO. 


time his own royal qualities, and the mental struggles 
which followed, if they had led him to a peculiar view 
of the kind of sovereignty to which he was destined, 
had left upon his mind a most absolute and serene 
conviction of his royal rights. During his whole 
public life he is distinguished from the other promi¬ 
nent characters of Jewish history by his unbounded 
personal pretensions. He calls himself habitually 
king and master, he claims expressly the character of 
that divine Messiah for which the ancient prophets 
had directed the nation to look. 

So far, then, it appears that Christ proposed to 
revive the theocracy in the form which it had worn in 
the age of David and Solomon. A hero-king was to 
represent to the nation their Jehovah, and to rule in 
the indefeasible right of natural superiority. But was 
the new monarchy to be a copy of the old? A thou¬ 
sand years had passed since the age of David. A 
new world had come into being. The cities through 
which Christ walked, the Jerusalem at which he kept 
the annual feasts, were filled with men compared with 
whom the contemporaries of David might be called 
barbarous, men whose characters had been moulded 
during many centuries by law, by trade and foreign 
intercourse, by wealth and art, by literature and 
prophecy. Was it possible that the old heroic mon¬ 
archy could be revived in the midst of a complicated 
and intellectual civilization? 

This difficulty does not seem to have occurred to 
Christ’s contemporaries. The religioTis Jews were 
looking for the appearance of one who should be 
neither more nor less than David had been. They 


THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 


33 


expected, it seems to see once more a warrior-king, 
judging in the gate of Jerusalem, or surrounded by his 
mighty men, or carrying his victorious arms into the 
neighboring countries, or receiving submissive embas¬ 
sies from Rome and Seleucia, and in the mean time 
holding awful communication with Jehovah, adminis- 
teiing His law and singing His praise. It was natural 
enough that such vague fancies should fill the minds 
of ordinary men. It was as impossible for them to 
conceive the true Christ, to imagine what he would 
do or how he would do “it, as it was impossible for 
them to fill his place. Meanwhile the Christ himself, 
meditating upon his mission in the desert, saw difficul¬ 
ties such as other men had no suspicion of. He saw 
that he must lead a life altogether different from that 
of David ; that the pictures drawn by the prophets of 
an ideal Jewish king were colored by the manners of 
the times in which they had lived; that those pictures 
bore indeed a certain resemblance to the truth, but 
that the work before him was far more complicated 
and more delicate than the wisest prophet had sus¬ 
pected. 

It was in this way that the quarrel began between 
the Jews and their divine Messiah. Their heads were 
full of the languid dreams of commentators, the im¬ 
practicable pedantries of men who live in the past. 
He was grappling with the facts of his age in the 
strength of an inspiration to which no truth was 
hidden and no enterprise impossible. Accordingly 
he appeared before them, as it were, under a disguise. 
He confounded their calculations, and professing to 
be the king they expected, he did none of the things 


34 


ECCE HOMO. 


which they expected the king to do. He revived the 
theocracy, and the monarchy, but in a form not only 
unlike the system of David but utterly new and unpre¬ 
cedented. 

It is not uncommon to describe the Jews as having 
simply made the mistake of confounding a figurative 
expression with a literal one. It is said that when 
Christ called himself a king, he was speaking figura¬ 
tively, and that by ‘ king ’ he meant, as some say, 
God, as others, a wise man and teacher of morality, 
but that the Jews persisted in understanding the ex¬ 
pression literally. Such interpreters do not see that 
they attribute to intelligent men a mistake worthy of 
children or savages. We do not find in history whole 
nations misled, bloody catastrophes and revolutions 
produced, by verbal mistakes that could be explained 
in a moment. Again, they attribute to Christ conduct 
which is quite unaccountable. A wise man may at 
times dilate upon the authority which his wisdom 
gives him, and in doing so may compare himself to a 
king, but if he saw that his words were so grossly 
misapprehended that he was in danger of involving 
himself and others in political difficulties, he would 
certainly withdraw or explain the metaphor. But it 
is evident that Christ clung firmly to the title and 
attached great importance to it. This appears in the 
most signal manner on the occasion of his last entry 
into Jerusalem. He entered in a public triumph pie- 
ceded by those who hailed him as son of David, and 
when requested by those who thought the populace 
guilty of this very misconception of mistaking a wise 
man for a king to silence their enthusiastic cries, he 


THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 


35 


pointedly refused. Again, it is clear that this assump¬ 
tion of royalty was the ground of his execution. The 
inscription which was put upon his cross ran, This is 
Jesus, the King of the Jews. He had himself pro¬ 
voked this accusation of rebellion against the Roman 
government; he must have known that the language 
he used would be interpreted so. Was there then 
nothing substantial in the royalty he claimed? Did 
he die for a metaphor? 

It will soon become necessary to consider at leisure 
in what sense Christ understood his own royalty. At 
present it is enough to remark that, though he under¬ 
stood it in a very peculiar sense, and though he abdi¬ 
cated many of the functions of a sovereign, he yet 
regarded it as a royalty not less substantial, and far 
more dignified, than that of his ancestor David. We 
may go one step farther before entering into the details, 
and note the exact ground of the quarrel which the 
Jews had with him. He understood the work of the 
Messiah in one sense, and they in another, but what 
was the point of irreconcilable difference? They laid 
information against him before the Roman government 
as a dangerous character ; their real complaint against 
him was precisely this, that • he was not dangerous. 
Pilate executed him on the ground that his kingdom 
was of this world ; the Jews procured his execution 
precisely because it was not. In other words, they 
could not forgive him for claiming royalty and at the 
same time rejecting the use of physical force. His 
royal pretensions were not in themselves distasteful to 
them ; backed by a military force, and favored by suc¬ 
cess, those pretensions would have been enthusiast!- 


36 


ECCE HOMO. 


cally received. His tranquil life, passed in teaching 
and healing the sick, could not in itself excite their 
hatred. An eloquent teacher, gathering discij^les 
round him in Jerusalem and offering a new and de¬ 
vout interpretation of the Mosaic law, might have 
aroused a little spite, but not the cry of ‘ Crucify him ! * 
They did not object to the king, they did not object to 
the philosopher ; but they objected to the king in the 
garb of the philosopher. They were offended at what 
they thought the degradation of their great ideal. A 
king who neither had nor cared to have a court or an 
army; a king who could not enforce a command; a 
king who preached and lectured like a scribe, yet in his 
weakness and insignificance could not forget his dig¬ 
nity, had his royal title often in his mouth, and lec¬ 
tured with an authority that no scribe assumed ; these 
violent contrasts, this disappointment of their theories, 
this homely parody of their hopes, inspired them with 
an irritation, and at last a malignant disgust, which it 
is not hard to understand. 

That they were wrong we are all ready to admit. 
But what Christ really meant to do, and in what new 
form he proposed to revive the ancient monarchy, is 
not so clear as the error of his adversaries. It is this 
which we proceed to consider. 


37 


CHAPTER IV. 

Christ’s royalty. 

F ROM the peiplexity in which the Jews were in« 
volved by the contrast between Christ’s royal 
pretensions and the homely tenor of his life, they 
sometimes endeavored to deliver themselves by apply¬ 
ing practical tests. They laid matters before him of 
which it might seem the duty of a king to take cogni¬ 
zance. By this means they discovered that he con¬ 
sidered several of the ordinary" functions of a king not 
to lie within his province. For example, they showed 
him some of the tribute-money, and asked him 
whether they ought to pay it. It was an obvious, but 
at the same time a very effective way of sifting his 
monarchical claims. In the times of David the Jews 
had imposed tribute on the surrounding nations; it 
was a thing scarcely conceivable that in the age of the 
Messiah they should pay tribute to the foreigner. If 
Christ were a commissioned and worthy successor of 
the national hero, it seemed certain that he would be 
fired with indignation at the thought of so deep a 
national degradation. Strange to say, he appeared 
little interested in the question, and coldly bade them 
not be ashamed to pay back into Caesar’s treasury the 
coins that came from Caesar’s mint. If there be one 
function more than another which seems proper to a 


ECCE IIOMO. 


3s 

king, it is that of maintaining and asserting the inde¬ 
pendence of his realm; yet this function Christ per¬ 
emptorily declined to undertake. 

The ancient kings of Judah had been judges. Ac¬ 
cordingly the Jews invited Christ more than once to 
undertake the office of a judge. We read of a civil 
action concerning an inheritance which was submitted 
to him, and of a criminal case of adultery in which he 
was asked to pronounce judgment. In both cases he 
declined tire office, and in one of them with an express 
declaration that he had received no commission to 
exercise judicial functions. 

The ancient kings of Judah had commanded the 
armies of the nation. It has been already remarked 
that Christ refrained in the most decided manner from 
undertaking this function. He expressly told Pilate 
that his kingdom was one the members of which did 
not fight, and, consistently with this principle, he for¬ 
bade his follower Peter to take up arms even in order 
to save him from arrest. 

What functions then did Christ undertake? We 
feel baffled at the beginning of our investigation, and 
can enter into the perplexity of the Jews, for those 
which we have enumerated are the principal functions 
of the ancient monarchy. All of them Christ declined, 
and yet continued to speak of himself as king, and that 
with such consistency and clearness that those who 
were nearest to his person understood him most liter¬ 
ally, and quarrelled for places and dignities under 
him. Our perplexity arises from this: that whereas 
Christ announced the restoration of the Davidic mon¬ 
archy, and presented himself to the nation as their 


Christ’s royalty. 


39 


king, yet, when we compare the position he assumed 
'with that of an ancient Jewish king, we fail to find any 
point of resemblance. 

But the truth is, as it appears after a little considera¬ 
tion, that in this rough comparison we have not suffi¬ 
ciently remembered the very peculiar view taken by the 
Jews — perhaps originally by other ancient nations — 
of royalty. It is possible, though it cannot be proved, 
that other nations, such as the Greeks, gave the name 
of king, in the first instance, to the god of the particu¬ 
lar tribe, and afterwards transferred it to the human 
being who was supposed to be sprung from him, or 
beloved and inspired by him. But that among the 
Jews the notion of royalty was derived from that of 
divinity, seems clear. Human kings were appointed 
late in Palestine, but from a much earlier time the 
twelve tribes had lived under a monarchy. Their 
national Divinity had been their king. He had been 
believed to march at the head of their armies and to 
bestow victory, to punish wrong-doing and to heal 
differences when the tribes were at peace. The hu¬ 
man king who was afterwards appointed was king but 
in a secondary sense, as the deputy’’ of the Invisible 
King, and the inspired depositary of His will. Now 
it is important to remark that the human king repre¬ 
sented the Divine King in certain matters only, and 
not in others. In the habitual acts of administration 
the king officiated, but there were some acts which 
Jehovah had done for the nation once for all, in which, 
as they were not to be repeated, none of the house of 
David could represent Him. Vet these acts were far 
greater than those which were regularly repeated, and 


4° 


ECCE HOMO. 


displayed much more magnificently the royalty of 
Jehovah. 

These acts were two — the calling of the nation, and 
the institution of its laws. 

It was believed, in the first place, that the nation 
owed its separate existence to Jehovah’s election of 
Abraham. The origin of other nations is lost in 
antiquity, but we can still trace the movements of the 
primitive shepherd who separated himself from his 
Chaldaean countrymen in obedience to an irresistible 
divine impulse, and lived a wandering life among his 
flocks and herds, ennobled by his unborn descendants 
as other men are by their dead ancestors, rich, as it 
were, by a reversed inheritance from the ages after 
him, and actually bearing in his body Moses and 
David and Christ. His life was passed in mysteri¬ 
ous communion with the Sovereign Will which had 
isolated him in the present and given him for compen¬ 
sation a home in the future. 

This then was the first work which the Invisible 
King did for his subjects. He created the nation over 
which He was to reign. And the Jews in after time9 
loved to speak of Him as the God of Abraham, 
Isaac, and Jacob, the God, that is, who had watched 
over the growth of a family into a nation, who 
had sealed that family for Himself and chosen the 
nation. 

But this had been done once for all. The king of 
the house of David might represent to the people 
their Invisible King at the head of an army or on the 
judgment seat, but he could not represent to them the 
Founder of their commonwealth, the God who had 


CHRIST'S ROYALTY. 4 1 

% 

been, as it were, their dwelling-place in all genera¬ 
tions. 

The covenant between Abraham and his invisible 
Guide had been simple. No condition but isolation 
and the sign of it, circumcision, had been imposed 
upon the first Hebrew; he received and obeyed 
occasional monitions, and he was blessed with a con¬ 
tinually increasing prosperity. But the family grew 
into a nation, and then the covenant was enlarged. 
He who had called the nation now did for it the 
second work of a king and gave it a law. No longer 
special commands imposed on special persons, but 
general laws binding on every Israelite at all times 
alike, laws regulating the behavior of every Israelite 
towards his brother Israelite and towards the Invisible 
King, laws which turned a wandering tribe of the 
desert into a nation worthy of the settled seat, the 
mountain fastness girdled with plain and cornfield and 
protected by Jordan and the sea, with which at the 
same time their Patron endowed them. In this work 
of legislation He was represented by Moses, of whom 
it therefore is written that ‘ he was king in Jeshurun/ 
This too was a work done once for all. No king of 
the house of David ever represented the Invisible King 
in His capacity of legislator. To study the divine law 
diligently and administer it faithfully was the highest 
praise to which a David or Hezekiah could aspire. 

Thus the kings of the house of David were repre- 
sentatives of the Invisible King in certain matters only. 
The greatest works which can be done for a nation 
by its shepherd were quite beyond their scope and 
province. 


42 


ECCE HOMO. 


We may now perceive how Christ might abdicate 
all the functions they had undertaken, and yet remain 
a king in a much higher sense than they, and in what 
respect the conception of the Messiah formed by the 
Jews of Christ’s time might differ from that which 
Christ Himself formed of him. It was the fatal mis¬ 
take of the most influential body in the nation, that 
mixed body which is called the Scribes and Pharisees, 
to regard the Mosaic law as final and unalterable. 
They fell into the besetting sin of lawyers in all ages. 
Assuming therefore that nothing remained for the 
Messiah to do in legislation, they were driven to sup¬ 
pose that he too, like the ancient kings, would be but 
an imperfect representative of the Supreme King. 
And so they were driven to conceive him as occupied 
with administration or conquest, and, had their dream 
been realized, the Christ would have appeared in 
history far inferior to Moses. 

On the other hand, Christ fixed his thoughts solely 
on the greater and more fundamental works of an 
heroic royalty. He respected the Mosaic legislation 
not less than his contemporaries, but he deliberately 
proposed to himself to supersede it by a new one pro¬ 
mulgated on his own authority. He undertook the 
part rather of a second Moses than of a second David, 
and though he declined to take cognizance of special 
legal cases that were submitted to him, we never find 
him refusing to deliver judgment upon a general point 
of law. But he went still deeper, and undertook a 
work yet more radical than that of Moses. Not only 
did he boldly announce that the work done on Sinai 
was to be done over again by himself, but even the 


CHRIST’S ROYALTY. 


M3 


earlier and primary work of the Invisible King done 
in Ur of the Chaldees, the Call which had brought the 
nation into existence, he declared himself commis¬ 
sioned to repeat. In that proclamation, ‘ the kingdom 
of heaven is at hand,’ we have hitherto seen only a 
restoration of the ancient theocracy, but a closer con¬ 
sideration will show us that the restoration was nc 
mere resumption of the old system at the point at 
which it had been left oft' and in the original form, 
but a recommencement of the whole history from the 
beginning; not a revival of the old covenant but a 
new covenant, a new election, a new legislation, a 
new community. In the early time there came a voice 
to Abraham which said, ‘ Get thee out of thy kindred, 
and from thy country, and from thy father’s house, 
into the land of which I shall tell thee: and I will 
make of thee a great nation, and in thee shall all 
families of the earth be blessed.’ And now there 
was heard throughout Palestine a voice proclaiming, 
‘ There is no man that hath given up father, or mother, 
or house, or children, or lands, for my sake and the 
gospel’s, but he shall receive an hundredfold more in 
this present life, and in the world to come life ever¬ 
lasting.’ The two calls resemble each other in sound ; 
in substance and meaning they are exactly parallel. 
The object of both was to create a new society which 
should stand in a peculiar relation to God, and which 
should have a legislation different from and higher 
than that which springs up in secular states. And 
from both such a society sprang, from the first the 
ancient Jewish theocracy, from the second the Chrisr 
tian Church. 


44 


ECCE HOMO. 


It is not now so hard to understand Christ’s royal 
pretensions. He declined, it is true, to command 
armies, or preside in law courts, but higher works, 
such as imply equal control over the wills of men, the 
very works for which the nation chiefly hymned their 
Jehovah, he undertook in His name to do. He under¬ 
took to be the Father of an everlasting state, and the 
Legislator of a world-wide society. 

But this is not yet all. Christ was more than a new 
Moses and a new Abraham. For completeness we 
must here touch on a mysterious subject, of which the 
full discussion must be reserved for another place. 
Since the time of the Mosaic legislation a revolution 
had happened in the minds of men, which, though it 
is little considered because it happened gradually, is 
surely the greatest which the human mind has ever 
experienced. Man had in the interval come to con¬ 
sider or suspect himself to be immortal . It is sur¬ 
prising that the early Jews, in whom the sense of God 
was so strong, and who were familiar with the con¬ 
ception of an Eternal Being, should yet have been 
oehind rather than before other nations in suspecting 
he immortality of the soul. The Greek did not even 
m the earliest times believe death to be annihilation, 
though he thought it was fatal to all joy and vigor; 
hut the early Jews, the Legislator himself, and most 
of the Psalmists, limit their hopes and fears to the 
present life, and compare m^ti to the beasts that perish, 
llow strange a revolution A* thought when the area 
of human hopes and fortunes suddenly extended itself 
without limit! Then first man must have felt himself 
great. Then first too human relations gained a solid 


CHRIST’S ROYALTY. 


45 


ity and permanence which they had never before 
seemed to have; then the great and wise of a remote 
past started into life again ; then the remote future 
moved nearer and became vivid like the present. 
This revolution had in a great measure taken place 
before the time of Christ. The suspicion of immor¬ 
tality appears in the later prophets, that suspicion 
which Christ himself was to develop into a glorious 
confidence. 

This extension of the term of human life had a pro¬ 
digious effect upon morality. We have spoken of 
Jehovah as legislating for the Jews. But a law is 
nothing unless it is enforced. Now in what way did 
Jehovah enforce the law He had given? In the first 
place by commissioned judges appointed from the 
people and inspired by Him with the necessary wis¬ 
dom. But many crimes pass undetected by the 
judge, or his wisdom fails him and the wrong person 
is punished, or he takes a bribe and perverts justice. 
In th^se cases, then, what did Jehovah do? How did 
He enforce His law? Did He suffer the guilty man 
to escape, or had He other ministers of justice beside 
the judge and the king? It was supposed that in such 
cases He called in the powers of nature against the 
transgressor, destroyed his vines with hailstones and 
his mulberry-trees with the frost, or abandoned his 
flocks and herds to the Bedouins of the desert. But 
this theory was found to be unsatisfactory. Life is a 
short term. The transgressor has but to tide over a 
few years, and he is in the haven beside the just man, 
where the God of the living cannot touch him. And 
the Jew, watching the ways of Jehovah, could not but 


46 


ECCE HOMO. 


observe that this often happened. He was troubled to 
see over and over again prosperous villany carried to 
an honored grave in the fulness of years and the 
satiety of enjoyment. Another conjecture was haz¬ 
arded. It was said the bad man prospers sometimes, 
but he has no children, or at least his house soon dies 
out. Among Jews and Gentiles alike this theory 
found favor for a time — 

ofifii t£ fnv notifies noil yofivam nann&'Qovaiv 

e\06vx' ex noXfyoio xul ulfijs firfCoirjios . 2 

But again facts were too stubborn to be resisted, and 
the Psalmist is obliged to admit that here too the 
wicked prosper — ‘ They have children at their desire, 
and leave the rest of their substance to their babes/ 

In these circumstances morality must have pre¬ 
served but a precarious existence. Good and evil 
were almost on equal terms. The good man had 
sacrifices to make and trials to undergo, but little re¬ 
ward to expect. The bad man had the obvious gains 
of his villany, without any very serious danger of 
punishment. In these circumstances, also, the King- 
ship of Jehovah Himself must have wanted majesty. 
Profoundly as some Jews felt His greatness, the com¬ 
mon feeling towards Him must have been one of far 
less awe than that which we feel for the Almighty 
God. For He seemed to have little power either to 
help His friends or punish His enemies. Human life 
being essentially short, He could but lengthen or 
shorten it a little. And the little power He had lie 
seemed not to use. 

The Jehovah, therefore, whom Christ came to 


Christ’s royalty. 


47 


represent, at a time when the immortality of the soul 
was a doctrine extensively received or favored, was 
practically a much more powerful and awful King 
than He who had spoken by Moses, and His relation 
to His subjects was far more intimate. In the eailier 
time He had enforced His law mainly through the 
civil magistrate ; His other judgments were excep¬ 
tional and rare. But now the office of the civil 
magistrate retreated into the background, and Jeho¬ 
vah was conceived rather as holding His assize in that 
mysterious region which had recently become visible 
to men on the other side of death, as a distant land 
becomes visible on the other side of a river or strait, 
— the region which a Jew might compare to tire Holy 
Land itself, the residence of Jehovah, parted from the 
desert and the unconsecrated earth by the stream of 
Jordan. 

When Christ, therefore, declined the office of civil 
judge, it does not follow that he declined all judicial 
functions. Of the judgments of Jehovah we see that 
those pronounced by the magistrate formed now but a 
small part. And in declining these he took all the 
others, the diviner judgments, into his own hand. 
We cannot here delay upon this subject, but the fact 
appears upon the surface of our biographies that 
Christ, however carefully abstaining from the function 
of the civil magistrate, was yet continually engaged in 
passing judgment upon men. Some he assured of the 
forgiveness of their sins, upon others he pronounced a 
severe sentence. But in all cases he did so in a style 
which plainly showed, so as sometimes to startle by 
its boldness those who heard, that he considered the 


4 8 


ECCE HOMO. 


ultimate and highest decision upon men’s deeds, that 
decision to which all the unjustly condemned at hu¬ 
man tribunals appeal, and which weighs not the deed 
only, but motives, and temptations, and ignorances, 
and all the complex conditions of the deed — that he 
considered, in short, heaven and hell to be in his 
hand. 

We conclude, then, that Christ in describing him¬ 
self as a king, and at the same time as king of the 
Kingdom of God—in other words, as a king repre¬ 
senting the Majesty of the Invisible King of a 
theocracy — claimed the character first of Founder, 
next of Legislator, thirdly, in a certain high and 
peculiar sense, of Judge, of a new divine society. 


49 


CHAPTER V. 

Christ’s credentials 

TN defining as above the position which Christ as- 
sumed, we have not entered into controvertible 
matter. We have not rested upon single passages, 
nor drawn upon the fourth Gospel. To deny that 
Christ did undertake to found and to legislate for a 
new theocratic society, and that he did claim the office 
of Judge of mankind, is indeed possible, but only to 
those who altogether deny the credibility of the extant 
biographies of Christ. If those biographies be admit¬ 
ted to be generally trustworthy, then Christ undertook 
to be what we have described ; if not, then of course 
this, but also every other, account of him falls to the 
ground. 

When we contemplate this scheme as a whole, and 
glance at the execution and results of it, three things 
strike us with astonishment. First, its prodigious 
originality, if the expression may be used. What 
other man has had the courage or elevation of mind to 
say, 4 1 will build up a state by the mere force of my 
w ill, without help from the kings of the world, with¬ 
out taking advantage of any of the secondary causes 
which unite men together — unity of interest or 
speech, or blood-relationship. I will make laws for 
my state which shall never be repealed, and I will 

3 


5 ® 


ECCE HOMO. 


defy all the powers of destruction that are at work in 
the world to destroy what I build ’ ? 

Secondly, we are astonished at the calm confidence 
with which the scheme was carried out. The reason 
why statesmen can seldom work on this vast scale is 
that it commonly requires a whole lifetime to gain 
that ascendency over their fellow-men which such 
schemes presuppose. Some of the leading organi¬ 
sers of the world have said, ‘ I will work my way to 
supreme power, and then I will execute great plans.’ 
But Christ overleaped the first stage altogether. He 
did not work his w T ay to royalty, but simply said to all 
men, ‘ I am your king.’ He did not struggle forward 
to a position in which he could found a new state, but 
simply founded it. 

Thirdly, we are astonished at the prodigious success 
of the scheme. It is not more certain that Christ pre¬ 
sented himself to men as the founder, legislator, and 
judge of a divine society than it is certain that men 
have accepted him in these characters, that the divine 
society has been founded, that it has lasted nearly two 
thousand years, that it has extended over a large and 
the most highly civilized portion of the earth’s surface, 
and that it continues full of vigor at the present day. 

Between the astonishing design and its astonishing 
success there intervenes an astonishing instrumentality 
— that of miracles. It will be thought by some that 
in asserting miracles to have been actually wrought by 
Christ we go bevond what the evidence, perhaps be¬ 
yond what any possible evidence, is able to sustain. 
Waiving then for the present the question whether 
miracles were actually wrought, w r e may state a fact 


l-’HRIST'S credentials. 


51 

which is fully capable of being established by ordinal*) 
evidence, and which is actually established by evidence 
as ample as any historical fact whatever — the fact, 
namely, that Christ professed to work miracles. We 
may go further, and assert with confidence that Christ 
was believed by his followers really to work miracles, 
and that it was mainly on this account that they con* 
ceded to him the preeminent dignity and authority 
which he claimed. The accounts we have of these 
miracles may be exaggerated; it is possible that in 
some special cases stories have been related which 
have no foundation whatever; but, on the whole, 
miracles play so important a part in Christ’s scheme 
that any theory which would represent them as due 
entirely to the imagination of his followers or of a 
later age destroys the credibility of the documents not 
partially but wholly, and leaves Christ a personage as 
mythical as Hercules. Now the present treatise aims 
to show that the Christ of the Gospels is not mythical, 
by showing that the character those biographies por¬ 
tray is in all its large features strikingly consistent, and 
at the same time so peculiar as to be altogether be¬ 
yond the reach of invention both by individual genius 
and still more by what is called the 4 consciousness of 
an age.’ Now if the character depicted in the Gos¬ 
pels is in the main real and historical, they must be 
generally trustworthy, and, if so, the responsibility of 
miracles is fixed on Christ. In this case the reality of 
the miracles themselves depends in a great degree on 
the opinion we form of Christ’s veracity, and this 
opinion must aiise gradually from the careful exami¬ 
nation of his whole life. For oui present purpose, 


ECCE IIOMO. 


5 2 

which is to investigate the plan which Christ formed 
and the way in which he executed it, it matters noth¬ 
ing whether the miracles were real or imaginary; in 
either case, being believed to be real, they had the 
same effect. Provisionally therefore we may speak of 
them as real. 

Assuming then that Christ performed genuine mira¬ 
cles, we have before us the explanation of the ascend¬ 
ency which he was able to exert. Yet it is important 
to consider in what precise manner men were affected 
by this supernatural power. By itself, supernatural 
power would not have procured for Christ the kind 
of ascendency he wanted, but exactly that ascendency 
which he so decidedly rejected. We have seen him in 
the wilderness, as it appeared, declining an empire 
founded on compulsion ; and, if this be conjectural, at 
feast there is no doubt that it was by declining to use 
compulsion that he offended his countrymen. Nor 
can we have any doubt that, his object being what we 
have ascertained it to be, he was right in resting as 
little as possible upon force. A leader of armies, a 
tyrant, may want physical force and may desire the 
means of crushing opposition ; but a wise legislator 
would desire that the citizens should receive his laws 
rather because they felt the value of them than from 
terror; and a judge, such as Christ professed to be, 
w ould prefer to influence the conscience and arouse 
the sense of shame rather than to work upon the fear 
of punishment. Supernatural power was not invaria¬ 
bly connected in the mincis of the ancients with God 
and goodness; it w r as supposed to be in the gift of 
evil spirits as w r ell as good ; it w T as regarded w r itli hor« 


Christ’s credentials. 


53 


ror in as many cases as with reverence. -And, indeed, 
when wielded by Christ, the first impression which it 
produced upon those who witnessed it was one of 
alarm and distress. Men were not so much disposed 
to admire or adore as to escape precipitately fiorn the 
presence of one so formidable. The Gadarenes prayed 
Christ to depart out of their coasts. Even Peter made 
the same petition, and that at a time when he knew 
too much of his Master utterly to misapprehend his 
character and purpose. 

It appears, then, that these supernatural powers 
freely used were calculated to hinder Christ’s plan 
almost as much as to further it. The sense of being 
in the hands of a Divine Teacher is in itself elevating 
and beneficial, but the close proximity of an over¬ 
whelming force crushes freedom and reason. Had 
Christ used supernatural power without restraint, as 
his countrymen seemed to expect of him and as an¬ 
cient prophecy seemed to justify them in expecting, 
when it spoke of the Messiah ruling the nations with 
a rod of iron and breaking them in pieces like a pot¬ 
ter’s vessel, we cannot imagine that any redemption 
would have been wrought for man. The powei 
would have neutralized instead of seconding the wis¬ 
dom and goodness which wielded it. So long as it 
was present it would have fettered and frozen the fac 
ulties of those on whom it worked, so that the legis¬ 
lation which it was used to introduce would have been 
placed on the same footing as the commands of a ty¬ 
rant, and, on the other hand, as soon as it was re¬ 
moved, the legislation and it would have passed into 
oblivion together. 


54 


ECCE HOMO. 


We have anticipated in a former chapter the means 
by which Christ avoided this result. He imposed 
upon himself a strict restraint in the use of his super¬ 
natural powers. He adopted the principle that he 
was not sent to destroy men’s lives but to save them, 
and rigidly abstained in practice from inflicting any 
kind of damage or harm. In this course he perse¬ 
vered so steadily that it became generally understood. 
Every one knew that this king , whose royal preten¬ 
sions were so prominent, had an absolutely unlimited 
patience, and that he would endure the keenest criti¬ 
cism, the bitterest and most malignant personal at¬ 
tacks. Men’s mouths were opened to discuss his 
claims and character with entire freedom ; so far from 
regarding him with that excessive fear which might 
have prevented them from receiving his doctrine intel¬ 
ligently, they learnt gradually to treat him, even while 
they acknowledged his extraordinary power, with a 
reckless animosity which they would have been afraid 
to show towards an ordinary enemy. With curious 
inconsistency they openly charged him with being 
leagued with the devil; in other words, they acknowl¬ 
edged that he was capable of boundless mischief, and 
yet they were so little afraid of him that they were 
ready to provoke him to use his whole power against 
themselves. The truth was, that they believed him to 
be disarmed by his own deliberate resolution, and they 
judged rightly. He punished their malice only by 
verbal reproofs, and they gradually gathered courage 
to attack the life of one whose miraculous powers 
they did not question. 

Meantime, while this magnanimous self-restraint 


Christ’s credentials. 


55 


saved him from false friends and mercenary or servile 
flatterers, and saved the kingdom he founded from the 
corruption of self-interest and worldliness, it gave him 
a power over the good such as nothing else could have 
given. For the noblest and most amiable thing that 
can be seen is power mixed with gentleness, the re¬ 
posing, self-restraining attitude of strength. These 
are ‘ the fine strains of honor,’ these are 4 the graces 
of the gods ’ — 

To tear with thunder the wide cheeks o’ the air, 

And yet to charge the sulphur with a bolt 

That shall but rive an oak. 

And while he did no mischief under any provocation, 
his power flowed in acts of beneficence on every side. 
Men could approach near to him, could eat and drink 
with him, could listen to his talk, and ask him ques¬ 
tions, and they found him not accessible only, but 
warm-hearted, and not occupied so much with his 
own plans that he could not attend to a case of dis¬ 
tress or mental perplexity. They found him full of 
sympathy and appreciation, dropping words of praise, 
ejaculations of admiration, tears. He surrounded 
himself with those who had tasted of his bounty, sick 
people whom he had cured, lepers whose death-in-life, 
demoniacs whose hell-in-life, he had terminated with a 
single powerful word. Among these came loving 
hearts who thanked him for friends and relatives res¬ 
cued for them out of the jaws of premature death, and 
others whom he had saved, by a power which did not 
seem different, from vice and degradation. 

This temperance in the use of supernatural power 
is the masterpiece of Christ. It is a moral miracle 


56 


ECCE HOMO. 


superinduced upon a physical one. This repose in 
greatness makes him surely the most sublime image 
ever offered to the human imagination. And it is pre¬ 
cisely this trait which gave him his immense and im¬ 
mediate ascendency over men. If the question be put 
—'Why was Christ so successful? Why did men 
gather lound him at his call, form themselves into a 
new society according to his wish, and accept him 
with unbounded devotion as their legislator and judge? 
some will answer, 4 Because of the miracles which 
attested his divine character; ’ others, 4 Because of 
the intrinsic beauty and divinity of the great law of 
love which he propounded.’ But miracles, as we 
have seen, have not by themselves this persuasive 
power. That a man possesses a strange power which 
I cannot understand is no reason why I should receive 
his words as divine oracles of truth. The powerful 
man is not of necessity also wise ; his power may 
terrify, and yet not convince. On the other hand, the 
law of love, however divine, was but a precept. Un¬ 
doubtedly it deserved that men should accept it for its 
intrinsic worth, but men are not commonly so eager 
to receive the words of wise men nor so unbounded 
in their gratitude to them. It was neither for his mir¬ 
acles nor for the beauty of his doctrine that Christ was 
worshipped. Nor was it for his winning personal 
character, nor for the persecutions he endured, nor for 
his martyrdom. It was for the inimitable unity which 
all these things made when taken together. In other 
words, it was for this, that he whose power and great¬ 
ness as shown in his miracles were overwhelming 
denied himself the use of his power, treated it as a 


Christ’s credentials. 


57 


slight thing, walked among men as though he were 
one of them, relieved them in distress, taught them to 
love each other, bore with undisturbed patience a pe:- 
petual hailstorm of calumny; and when his enemies 
grew fiercer, continued still to endure their attacks 
m silence, until petrified and bewildered with astonish¬ 
ment, men saw him arrested and put to death with 
torture, refusing steadfastly to use in his own behalf 
the power he conceived he held for the benefit of 
others. It was the combination of greatness and self- 
sacrifice which won their hearts, the mighty powers 
held under a mighty control, the unspeakable conde¬ 
scension. the Cross of Christ. 

By this, and by nothing else, the enthusiasm of 
a Paul was kindled. The statement rests on no 
hypothesis or conjecture ; his Epistles bear testimony 
to it throughout. The trait in Christ which filled his 
whole mind was his condescension. The charm of 
that condescension lay in its being voluntary. The 
- cross of Christ, of which Paul so often speaks as the 
only thing he found worth glorying in, as that in com¬ 
parison with which everything in the world was 
as dung , was the voluntary submission to death of 
one who had the power to escape death; this he 
says in express words. And what Paul constantly 
repeats in impassioned language, the other apostles 
echo. Christ’s voluntary surrender of power is their 
favorite subject, the humiliation implied in his whole 
life, and crowned by his death. This sacrifice, which 
they regard as made for them , demands in their 
opinion to be requited by an absolute devotion on their 
part to Christ. Beyond controversy sue a was their 

3* 


58 


ECCE HOMO. 


feeling, and this feeling was the ground of that obedi¬ 
ence to Christ and acceptance of his legislation, which 
made the success of his scheme. If we suppose that 
Christ really performed no miracles, and that those 
which are attributed to him were the product of self- 
deception mixed in some proportion or other with 
imposture, then no doubt the faith of St. Paul and St. 
John was an empty chimera, a mere misconception; 
but it is none the less true that those apparent miracles 
were essential to Christ’s success, and that had he 
not pretended to perform them, the Christian Church 
would never have been founded, and the name of 
Jesus of Nazareth would be known at this day only 
to the curious in Jewish antiquities. 

We have represented Christ’s abstinence from the 
use of his supernatural power as a device by which he 
avoided certain inconveniences which would have 
arisen from the free use of it. It is true that had he 
not practised this abstinence, his legislation could not 
have gained the worthy and intelligent acceptance it 
did gain; and by adopting this contrivance he tri¬ 
umphantly attained the object he proposed to himself. 
Still it was no mere measure of prudence or policy. 
Christ himself probably never thought of it as a contri¬ 
vance or device ; to him such self-restraint no doubt 
appeared simply required by duty, an essential part 
of fidelity to the commission he bore. And when we 
have investigated the character of Ch“ist’s legislation, 
we shall find that the great self-denial of his life, 
Desides being a means of introducing his legislation, 
was the greatest of all illustrations of the spirit of that 
legislation. The kind of life he prescribed to his fol- 


CHRIST'S CREDENTIALS. 


59 


lowers lie exemplified in his own person in the most 
striking way, by dedicating all his extraordinary pow¬ 
ers to beneficent uses only, and deliberately placing 
himself for all purposes of hostility and self-defence 
on a level with the weakest. 

To sum up the results of this chapter. We began 
by remarking that an astonishing plan met with ?.n 
astonishing success, and we raised the question to 
what instrumentality that success was due. Christ 
announced himself as the Founder and Legislator of 
a new Society, and as the Supreme Judge of men. 
Now by what means did he procure that these im¬ 
mense pretensions should be allowed? He might 
have done it by sheer power; he might have adopted 
persuasion, and pointed out the merits of the scheme 
and of the legislation he proposed to introduce. But 
he adopted a third plan, which had the effect not mere¬ 
ly of securing obedience, but of exciting enthusiasm 
and devotion. He laid men under an immense obliga¬ 
tion. He convinced them that he was a person of 
altogether transcendent greatness, one who needed 
nothing at their hands, one whom it was impossible to 
benefit by conferring riches, or fame, or dominion 
upon him, and that, being so great, he had devoted 
himself of mere benevolence to their good. He 
showed them that for their sakes he lived a hard and 
laborious life, and exposed himself to the utmost 
malice of powerful men. They saw him hungry, 
though they believed him able to turn the stones into 
bread, they saw his royal pretensions spurned, though 
they believed that he could in a moment take into his 
hand all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of 


6o 


ECCE HOMO. 


them ; they saw his life in clanger; they saw him U 
last expire in agonies, though they believed that, had 
tie so willed it, no danger could harm him, and thal 
had he thrown himself from the topmost pinnacle of 
Ihe temple he would have been softly received in the 
arms of ministering angels. Witnessing his sufferings, 
and convinced by the miracles they saw him work 
that they were voluntarily endured, men’s hearts were 
touched, and pity for weakness blending strangely 
with wondering admiration of unlimited power, an 
agitation of gratitude, sympathy, and astonishment, 
such as nothing else could ever excite, sprang up in 
them, and when, turning from his deeds to his words, 
they found this very self-denial which had guided his 
own life prescribed as the principle which should 
guide theirs, gratitude broke forth in joyful obedience, 
self-denial produced self-denial, and the Law and 
Law-Giver together were enshrined in their inmost 
hearts for inseparable veneration. 


6i 


CHAPTER VI. 

Christ’s winnowing fan. 

IE first step in our irrvestigation is now taken. 

We have considered the Christian Church in its 
idea, that is to say, as it existed in the mind of its 
founder and before it was realized. Our task will 
now become more historical and will deal with the 
actual establishment of the new Theocracy; but we 
shall endeavor to keep the idea always in view and 
sedulously to avoid all such details as may have the 
effect of obscuring it. 

The founder’s plan was simply this, to renew in a 
form adapted to the new time that divine Society of 
which the Old Testament contains the history. The 
essential features of that ancient Theocracy were: 
(i) the divine Call and Election of Abraham ; (2) the 
divine legislation given to the nation through Moses; 
(3) the personal relation and responsibility of every 
individual member of the Theocracy to its Invisible 
King. As the new Theocracy was to be the counter¬ 
part of the old, it was to be expected that these three 
features would be reflected in it. Accordingly we 
have found Christ undertaking to issue a Call to men 
such as was given to Abraham, to deliver a Legisla¬ 
tion such as Israel had received from Moses, and to 
occupy a personal relation of Judge and Master to 


62 


ECCE HOMO. 


every man such as in the earlier Theocracy had been 
occupied by Jehovah himself without representative. 

Such was the plan. In proceeding to consider the 
execution of it, these three essential features will 
afford the means of a convenient arrangement, and 
the correspondence of the new Theocracy to the old 
in respect of them will afford a constant instructive 
illustration. Our investigation divides itself from 
this point into three parts. We shall treat in order the 
Call, the Legislation, and the Divine Royalty of Christ, 
and in proceeding now to consider the Call we shall 
ask the question, In what respect did the Call issued 
by Christ differ from that which came to Abraham? 

The Call then which the first Christians received 
differed from that received by Abraham, in the first 
place, in this respect, that it did not separate them 
from civil society. Abraham was commanded to 
isolate himself, abandoning his family and his native 
country. The life he adopted was one which was 
possible in his age and country. All external 
authority whatsoever he threw off; his actions were 
controlled by no power except that invisible one 
which had decreed his isolation In his case the 
pioblem of the connection between Church and State 
was solved in the most simple manner, namely by the 
abolition of the State. There was but one Society, 
of which God was king, the patriarch being Ilis 
deputy. What intercourse he occasionally had with 
the world outside his own pastoral encampment was 
not like the intercourse of one citizen with another, 
but consisted of formal negotiations or wars such as 
are transacted between states. Now the early Chris- 


Christ’s winnowing fan. 


6.3 

tians, it is true, compare themselves with Abraham in 
this respect. They call themselves strangers and pil¬ 
grims upon the earth, wanderers without a country 
for the present, but expecting one on the other side of 
death. Applied to them, however, these expressions 
are not literally true but metaphorical, and mean only 
that the secular states of which they were members did 
not excite their interest or their patriotism so strongly 
as the divine Society into which Christ had called 
them. All of them were members of some secular 
state as well as of the Christian Church; a complex 
system of obligations lay upon all of them already 
when the new Christian obligations were imposed, 
and their activity was confined by a multitude of pro¬ 
hibitions. 

In this respect the Christian commonwealth was 
not only unlike the camp of Abraham but unlike the 
ancient theocracy at every period of its history. For 
the political organization of the Israelites sprang up, 
as it were, in the bosom of the ecclesiastical one, 
and was never regarded as distinct from it. The 
ancient Hebrew never regarded himself as living un- 
der two laws, one human and the other divine. To 
him all law alike was divine, whether it punished 
theft or denounced death against idolatry. He be¬ 
lieved both tables of the law to have been written 
with the finger of God. When he went before the 
civil tribunals it was 1 to inquire of God.’ But the 
Christian regarded the civil power of his time as ex¬ 
ternal altogether to the divine societv, and though he 
might be ready to recognize it as in some sense a 
di\inc ordinance and as having a right to his one- 


6 4 


ECCE HOMO. 


dience, yet on the other hand it knew nothing of that 
other commonwealth to which he professed to belong, 
had no respect for its laws, and would barely tolerate 
its existence. 

The divine Society had therefore to make its choice 
between declaring open war against the secular 
societies in the midst of which it was established, 
or refraining from all such acts as those societies 
would not allow. Following his principle of abstain* 
ing from force, Christ adopted the latter course. Now 
one principal thing no secular government would 
tolerate, namely, judicial tribunals and a penal ad¬ 
ministration independent of its own. We arrive 
therefore at the first distinguishing characteristic of 
the Society into which Christ called men. It was a 
Society whose rules were enforced by no punishments. 
The ancient Israelite who practised idolatry was 
stoned to death, but the Christian who sacrificed to 
the genius of Caesar could suffer nothing but exclusion 
from the Society, and this in times of persecution was 
in its immediate effects of the nature rather of a re¬ 
ward than of a punishment. At first it may seem 
that a society could exert no strong effect upon man¬ 
kind which contained no power of compulsion or 
punishment. But we are to remember what was said 
above of the judicial power of Jehovah under the old 
theocracy. That judicial power was exerted through 
the ciyil law courts, it is true, but also in another way. 
Jehovah was considered as judging in heaven as well 
as in the law court, and as punishing by providential 
visitations and by mysterious pains inflicted on the 

dead as well as bv the hands of the executioners of 

•/ 


Christ’s winnowing fan. 


65 


civil justice. Now in relinquishing the ordinary and 
administrative punishments, Christ retained for his 
Society the supernatural ones. And, so long as faith 
in the truth of his words continued lively among his 
followers, the state he founded was not distinguished 
among the states of the world by laxity of obedience 
in its members; rather have these supernatural terrors 
and hopes, intimately blended with other motives of 
which a time will come to speak, excited in the Chris¬ 
tian Church a more serious and enthusiastic loyalty 
than any secular commonwealth has known. 

We have learnt then thus much of the nature of 
Christ’s Call. When he went everywhere proclaiming 
the kingdom of God and summoning men to enroll 
themselves as members of it, he did not command 
them to abandon the national societies in which they 
were already enrolled. The Jew did not cease to be 
a Jew nor to yield obedience to Jewish and Roman 
authority, when he became a Christian; nor did he 
even cease to take an interest in national affairs. Par¬ 
ticular Christians might do so and might merge all 
patriotic feelings in their devotion to the divine 
Society, but Christ himself never ceased to feel 
keenly as a patriot. What the Jew did on becom¬ 
ing a Christian was to enter into a new relation which 
was additional to those relations in which he stood 
already. Besides the authorities which he acknowl¬ 
edged before, he now acknowledged the authority of 
Christ; the law of Christ became binding upon him 
as well as the law of his country; and besides stand¬ 
ing in awe of the civil judge and of the punishments 
he might inflict, he now stood in awe of Christ, whom 


66 


ECCE HOMO. 


he regarded as representing the supreme judicial maj¬ 
esty of Jehovah in the invisible world. 

Such then was the nature of Christ’s Call. We go 
on to consider who were the objects of it. Here 
again the Call of Abraham suggests by contrast a 
peculiarity in that uttered by Christ. In the former 
case one man only was called, in the latter all men 
whatsoever. The earlier Call was rigidly exclusive, 
the latter infinitely comprehensive. 

This comprehensiveness may take us by surprise 
when we consider the Baptist’s anticipations of Christ’s 
work. The baptism of John seems to have been ab¬ 
solutely comprehensive; all those who came John 
accepted. But he said in reference to Christ, 4 There 
stands one among you . . . whose fan is in his hand, 
and he will thoroughly purge his floor, and gather 
his wheat into the garner, but the chaff he will burn 
with unquenchable fire.’ It seems evident that the 
Baptist meant to warn those whom he had baptized 
without distinction or condition, that Christ’s w r ork 
would be more thorough and searching than his, and 
that he would apply a test of some kind, by which the 
insincere would be detected and separated from the 
good. It was the Baptist’s belief that a divine judg¬ 
ment was impending over the nation, and he seems 
to predict that Christ would make a selection of the 
sounder members of the nation, who would then lie 
rescued from the catastrophe, while the others would 
be left to their fate. This prediction assuredly sug¬ 
gests to us a course of action different from that which 
Christ, pursued. We do not at first sight discern the 
fan in his hand. We do not find him, as we might 


Christ’s winnowing fan. 67 

expect, discriminating the good from the oad, and 
honoring the former only with his call, but on the 
contrary, we find him summoning all in the same 
words, and with the same urgency. Nevertheless, on 
ft closer examination, it will appear that Christ did 
perform this work of discrimination, and that in a 
very remarkable manner, and that no expressions 
could be more strikingly just than those in which the 
Baptist described it. 

The difficulty of determining whether a man is or 
is not good has now become a commonplace of mor¬ 
alists and satirists. It is almost impossible to discover 
any test which is satisfactory, and the test which is 
actually applied by society is known to be unsatisfac¬ 
tory in the extreme. The good man of society is sim¬ 
ply the man who keeps to the prescribed routine of 
what is commonly considered to be duty; the bad 
man he who deserts it. In order to arrive at this 
view men start from a proposition which is true, but 
they make the mistake of assuming the converse prop¬ 
osition to be true. It is true that the good man does 
good deeds, but it is not necessarily true that he who 
does good deeds is a good man. Selfish prudence 
dictates a virtuous course of action almost as impera¬ 
tively as virtue itself; on the other hand, bad deeds 
maybe caused by bad teaching, bad example or the 
pressure of necessity, not less than by a vicious dispo¬ 
sition. And Christ showed throughout his life a re¬ 
markably strong conviction of this. He found society 
in Palestine in an especial degree wedded to the con¬ 
ventional standard. He found one class regarded 
with the most excessive reverence for their minute 


68 


ECCE HOMO. 


observance of proprieties, while those who sinned fell 
under a pitiless excommunication. But the winnow- 
ings of this social fan did not satisfy him. He was 
persuaded that it winnowed away much that was 
valuable, and he occupied himself with rescuing the 
outcasts who had been thus hastily rejected; much, on 
the other hand, which society stored up in its garner 
lie vehemently pronounced to be chaff. What stan¬ 
dard then did he substitute in the place of this conven¬ 
tional one which he repudiated ? The society which 
he formed was recruited from all classes; no one was 
repelled on account of his past life; publicans and 
prostitutes were freely admitted into it, and men of 
blameless lives and bred in Pharisaic sanctity learnt 
in Christ’s circle to hold intercourse with those whose 
company they would earlier have avoided as contami¬ 
nating. As we have seen, no one was excluded who 
did but choose to enter. Christ compared himself to 
a king who kept open house and surrounded his din¬ 
ner-table with beggars from the highway. And yet 
in those who became members of the society, certain 
common qualities might be observed, and it will be 
generally admitted that they formed, on the whole, the 
sounder part of the nation. Doubtless there were 
traitors and unworthy members among them; Christ 
early remarked and illustrated by a striking allegory 
the impossibility of perfectly sifting the seed sown in 
the Gospel-field. Doubtless, also, the fan in special 
cases winnowed out some wheat, and there remained 
to the end in the Pharisaic party good men that were 
incurably mistaken. But, on the whole, a winnowing 
was accomplished; and almost all the genuine worth 


Christ’s winnowing fan. 


69 

and virtue of the nation was gathered into the Chris¬ 
tian Church ; what remained without was perversity 
and prejudice, ignorance of the time, ignorance of the 
truth, that mass of fierce infatuation which was burnt 
up in the flames which consumed the temple, or shared 
the fall of the Antichrist Barcochebah. 

Some discriminating influence, then, was clearly at 
work, nor is it very difficult to discern its nature. 
Chiist did not go out of his way to choose his follow¬ 
ers ; the Call itself sifted them ; the Call itself was the 
fan he bore in his hand. For, though in form the 
same, it was in practical power very different from 
that Call which John had issued. Both John and 
Christ proclaimed the advent of a new divine Society, 
but John only proclaimed it as near, while Christ ex¬ 
hibited it as present, and laid upon those who desired 
to become members of it the practical obligations and 
burdens which were involved in membership. To 
obey John’s call was easy; it involved nothing beyond 
submission to a ceremony; and when the prophet had 
acquired a certain amount of credit, no doubt it be¬ 
came the fashion to receive baptism from him. This 
being so, he may well have felt that his work was but 
skin deep; his prophetic appeals to the conscie?ice 
had created a mighty stir, but no real conviction, no 
division between the good and bad, no national re¬ 
pentance. Idle people resorted to his preaching for a 
new sensation, frivolous people sought excitement in 
his baptism. With that honest humility so character¬ 
istic of him, he confessed, not precisely his failure, but 
the essentially imperfect and preliminary nature of his 
work. No Messiah, no prophet am I, he said. He 


7 ° 


ECCE HOMO. 


said, I am a voice , a cry faintly heard in the distance; 
I command nothing; I exact nothing; I do but bid 
you be ready. 

But after Aaron, the eloquent speaker, there came 
the new Moses, the Founder and Legislator. To lis¬ 
ten to him was no amusement for an idle hour; his 
preaching formed no convenient resort for light-minded 
people. His tone was not more serious than John’s, 
and it was somewhat less vehement, but it was far 
more imperious and exacting. John was contented 
with hearers; when he had delivered his admonitions, 
he relaxed his hold, and it was free to those who had 
listened to subside into the easy tranquillity which his 
eloquence had disturbed while it lasted. But Christ 
demanded followers , recruits for the great work he 
had in hand, settlers for the new city that was to be 
founded, subjects for the king he announced himself 
to be. Those who listened to him must be prepared 
to change all their prospects, and to adopt a new 
mode of life. The new mode of life was indeed not 
necessarily a hard one. Christ did not impose ascetic 
exercises upon his followers. He was an indulgent 
master, and for a considerable time those who enrolled 
themselves in the new Theocracy had no reason to 
dread any serious persecution from Jew or Roman. 
But he forewarned them that times would change in 
this respect, and in the mean while the devotion of a 
life to a new discipline, even though not a severe one, 
demands at least a certain power of self-devotion which 
many do not possess; and Christ’s discipline was in 
fact harder to human nature than it seemed, for it 
demanded a certain moral originality and strenuous* 


CHRIST’S WINNOWING FAN. 71 

ness of self-regeneration which men find in the long 
run more burdensome than the severest physical en¬ 
durances and austerities. Clearly, therefore, Christ’s 
Call imposed upon men the necessity of making a 
great resolution, of sacrificing a good deal. On the 
other hand, what did it offer? What equiva.ent could 
be expected by those who made the sacrifice ? Per¬ 
haps those who gathered early about the Messiah 
might expect places and dignities in his kingdom, to 
sit on thrones judging the tribes of Israel. This was 
undoubtedly the current belief, and it may have led 
many to attach themselves to Christ from motives 
purely mercenary. But in a little time such adven¬ 
turers must have remarked that in Christ’s language 
which would strike them with a sudden chill. They 
must have felt their hopes gliding away beneath their 
feet as they listened. The sacrifices they had made 
were unquestionable; many had left their homes and 
adopted a wandering life with their master ; they had 
joined a suspected sect; they were partisans of an 
extreme movement; they had placed themselves in 
opposition to the orthodoxy of the country. The risk 
they ran was certain, but the rewards they had ex¬ 
pected in the coming kingdom of the Messiah wei^ 
less certain. It would seem to them that Christ ex¬ 
plained his promises away. The royalty which he 
professed to bear himself was to vulgar apprehensions 
a mock royalty. It had no substance of power or 
wealth; yet he continued to call it royalty. They 
would soon begin to suspect that the subordinate dig 
nities in the new kingdom were of the same insubstan¬ 
tial character. And many of them would hear with 


72 


ECCE HOMO. 


bitter disappointment, and some with furious hatred, 
exhortations to humility, to contentment with a lowly 
place, from the lips of him whom they had expected 
to make their fortunes. In this way the interested 
and mercenary would fall off from him. The Call, 
which had acted as a test upon some directly by re¬ 
quiring from them an effort which they were not 
pi epared to make, would winnow away others more 
giadually as soon as it was understood to offer no 
prospects which could tempt a worldly mind. 

In this way, without excluding any, Christ suffered 
the unworthy to exclude themselves. He kept them 
aloof by offering them nothing which they could find 
attractive. And all those who found Christ’s Call 
attractive were such as were worthy to receive it. 
Some made up their minds without hesitation. The 
worldly, the preoccupied, turned away with peremp¬ 
tory contempt; a few of rare devotion closed with the 
Call at once. But the greater number were placed by 
it in a state of painful suspense and hesitation which 
lasted a long time. First, to understand distinctly 
what it was which was proposed to them ; next, to 
make up their minds as to the character of him who 
made such novel proposals, and advanced pretensions 
so unbounded; all this cost them much perplexity. 
But when so much was done, and they had decided 
favorably to the Prophet and his Theocracy, then 
came the greater difficulty, that of resolving to embark 
in an enterprise so unprecedented even at the beck of 
one whom they acknowledged to hold a divine com¬ 
mission. To break with prejudice and with conven¬ 
tion, to enter upon a great and free life, is not done 


CHRIST’S WINNOWING FAN. ' 73 

until some doubts have been mastered and some cow¬ 
ard hesitations silenced. In the midst of men who 
were in one stage or other of this mental conflict, 
Christ moved. His words spread around him a 
perpetual ferment, an ever-seething effervescence. 
Anxious broodings, waxing or waning convictions, 
resolutions slowly shaping themselves, a great travail 
of hearts, went on about him. An appeal had been 
made to what was noblest in each ; each had been 
summoned to shake off routine and convention ; some 
were gathering strength to accomplish the feat, some 
abandoning the attempt in despair. According to the 
issue of the conflict each man’s worthiness would 
appear. This, then, was the winnowing which Christ 
did among men. The Call itself was in his hand as 
a fan. 

Of this effect produced by his words he was fully 
conscious. He watched it with constant interest, and 
of his recorded sayings a large proportion are illus¬ 
trative descriptions of the different effect of the Call 
upon different characters. At one time he described 
the ferment it produced, and its gradual diffusion 
through the community, by comparing the kingdom 
of heaven to leaven which a woman hides in two 
measures of meal until the whole is leavened. At 
another time he compares the Call (the Word) to 
seed sown in different sorts of ground, but bearing a 
prosperous crop in one sort only. To one class he 
found it w*as like a treasure hidden in a field, which 
not to lose a man sells all his property and buys the 
held; to another class it is an invitation which they 
decline with civil excuses. Thus it shows each man 

4 


74 


ECCO HOMO 


in his genuine character, and, on the whole, those 
who accept the Call and abide by it are worthy of it. 
Yet to this rule there are a good many exceptions. 
When the seed has been sown in the best ground, 
tares will spring up with the wheat; thrown in, as it 
were, by some spiteful neighbor. And when the win¬ 
nowing has thus failed through mishap, we must not 
interfere further, says Christ; he will have no artificial 
winnowing by mere presumptuous private judgment 
of each other. 

These are specimens of Christ’s reflections upon the 
working of his proclamation. They offer nothing 
which need surprise us. Such a winnowing of men 
as he accomplished is not unique in kind. Every 
high-minded leader who gathers followers round him 
for any great purpose, when he calls to self-sacrifice 
and has no worldly rewards to offer, does something 
similar. He too in his degree winnows men. And 
therefore in tracing the history of many other move¬ 
ments which have agitated large numbers, we are 
often reminded of those parables of Christ that begin, 
‘ The kingdom of heaven is like —.’ If those parables 
are read together, they present an almost complete 
account of the ferment produced in a large and various 
society by a great principle presented to it impressively 
and practically. In all such cases each individual 
that comes within the influence may be said to pass 
an ordeal, and some characters come out from it vin¬ 
dicated that before were suspected to be worthless, 
and others are unmasked that had before imposed 
upon the world. But now what is the quality that 
carries a man through the ordeal? Can we find a 


Christ’s winnowing fan. 


75 


name for it? It is, no doubt, neither more nor less 
than moral worth or goodness; but this is no reason 
why a more precise name should not be given to this 
particular aspect of goodness. For, in fact, all the 
good qualities to which we give names, as justice, 
temperance, courage, &c., are not so much parts of 
goodness as aspects of it, and no man can have an) 
one of them without having in a degree all the others. 
What then shall we call goodness when it shows itself 
conquering convention, and unselfishly ranging itself 
on the right side in those crises when good and evil 
are most visibly opposed to each other? 

The first Christians had manifestly occasion for such 
a word, and one came into use which may be said to 
have become a permanent addition to the moral vo¬ 
cabulary of the world. This word was faith. It was 
not altogether new; it might be found in the writings 
of the prophets; but it had never before seemed so 
important or so expressive of the essential worth of a 
man. When he rejected the test of correct conduct 
which society uses, Christ substituted the test of faith. 
It is to be understood that this is not strictly a Chris¬ 
tian virtue ; it is the virtue required of one who wishes 
to become a Christian. So much a man must bring 
with him ; without it he is not worthy of the kingdom 
of God. To those who lack faith Christ will not be 
Legislatoi or King. He does not, indeed, dismiss 

them, but he suffers them to abandon a societv which 
soon ceases to have any attraction for them. Such, 

then, is the new test, and it will be found the only one 
which could answer Christ’s purpose of excluding all 
hollow discinles and including- all, however rude and 


7 6 


ECCE HOMO. 


vicious, who were capable of better things. Every 
other good quality which we may wish to make the 
test of a man implies either too little or too much for 
this purpose. 

Justice is often but a form of pedantry, mercy mere 
easiness of temper, courage a mere firmness of physi¬ 
cal constitution ; but if these virtues are genuine, ther 
they indicate not goodness merely but goodness con¬ 
siderably developed. A man may be potentially just 
or merciful, yet from defect of training he may be 
actually neither. We want a test which shall admit 
all who have it in them to be good whether their 
good qualities be trained or no. Such a test is found 
in faith. He who, when goodness is impressively put 
before him, exhibits an instinctive loyalty to it, starts 
forward to take its side, trusts himself to it, such a 
man has faith, and the root of the matter is in such a 
man. He may have habits of vice, but the loyal and 
faithful instinct in him will place him above many 
that practise virtue. He may be rude in thought and 
character, but he will unconsciously gravitate towards 
what is right. Other virtues can scarcely thrive with¬ 
out a fine natural organization and a happy training. 
But the most neglected and ungifted of men may 
make a beginning with faith. Other virtues want 
civilization, a certain amount of knowledge, a few 
books; but in half-brutal countenances faith will light 
up a glimmer of nobleness. The savage, who can do 
li 1 tie else, can wonder and worship and enthusiasti¬ 
cally obey. He who cannot know what is right can 
know' that some one else knows, he who has no law 
may still have a master, he w r ho is incapable of justice 


Christ’s winnowing fan. 

may be capable of fidelity, he who understands little 
may have his sins forgiven because he loves much. 

Let us sum up the points of difference which we 
have discovered between the Old Theocracy and the 
New. The Old Theocracy was utterly independent of 
all political organizations. It was therefore able to 
create a political organization of its own. The laws 
of the Theocracy were enforced by temporal punish¬ 
ments, as indeed at a time when the immortality of the 
soul was not recognized they could be enforced by no 
other. The New Theocracy was set up in the midst 
of a political organization highly civilized and exact¬ 
ing. It was therefore as completely devoid of any 
system of temporal punishments as the Old had been 
devoid of any other system. But, on the other hand, 
its members believed themselves to live under the eye 
of a Judge whose tribunal was in heaven and into 
whose hands they were to fall at death. Again, the 
Old Theocracy selected a single family out of the mass 
of mankind, while the New gathered out of mankind, 
by a summons which though absolutely comprehen¬ 
sive was yet not likely to be obeyed but by a certain 
class, all such as possessed any natural loyalty to 
goodness, enthusiasm enough to join a great cause, 
and devotion enough to sacrifice something to it. 


78 


CHAPTER VII. 

CONDITIONS OF MEMBERSHIP IN 

Christ’s kingdom. 

HE question now arises, What was involved in 



obeying Christ’s summons? When the crowd 
of faithful and loyal hearts gathered round him, struck 
with admiration of the wisdom that was so conde¬ 
scending and the power that was so beneficent, when, 
without throwing off the yoke of citizenship in earthly 
states, they accepted the burdens of citizenship in the 
New Jerusalem, and without ceasing to be amenable 
to Jewish and Roman judges, became responsible for 
all their deeds and even for all their thoughts to Christ, 
what was the extent of the new obligation which they 
incurred? How did a Christian differ from another 


man? 


Ever since the Church was founded up to the pres¬ 
ent time this question, What makes a man a Chris¬ 
tian r has been an all-important practical question. 
The answers given to it in the present day differ 
widely with the tolerance of those who give them, but 
they are generally the same in kind. They consist in 
specifying certain doctrines about God and Christ 
which a Christian must needs believe. One will say, 
He is no Christian who does not believe that the death 
of Christ effected a permanent change in the relations 


MEMBERSHIP IN CHRIST S KINGDOM. 79 

between man and God. Another will say, He is no 
Christian who does not believe in the Divinity of 
Christ. A third will say, It is necessary to believe in 
the Resurrection. Whether or no these beliefs, any 
or all of them, be necessary to the character of a 
Christian now, we may assert with absolute confidence 
that they were not required of the first followers of 
Christ, and further, tiiat most of them had never oc¬ 
curred to their minds. Nothing could suggest to them 
the Resurrection of Christ until he began darkly to 
prophesy of it to his most intimate disciples; and 
when he did so they listened, we are told, with be¬ 
wilderment and incredulity. So far from regarding 
the cross of Christ as the basis of a reconciliation be 
tween God and man, they would have listened with 
horror to the suggestion that their Master was destines 
to such a death. The Divinity of his person might 
indeed occur to some of those who witnessed his 
miraculous works, but it was certainly not generalh 
received in the society, for we find Christ pronouncing 
a solemn blessing upon Peter for being the first tc 
arrive at the conclusion that he was the Messiah. Ii 
appears, then, that so long as their master was with 
them the creed of the first Christians was of the most 
unformed and elementary character. To the ordinary 
belief of their age and country they added nothing 
except certain vague conceptions of the greatness of 
the new Prophet, whom the less advanced regarded 
as likely before long to establish a new royal dynasty 
at Jerusalem, while others of greater penetration re¬ 
garded him as a new Moses and a divinely commis¬ 
sioned reformei of the law. It is clear, then, that 


8 o 


ECCE HOMO. 


those who consider an elaborate creed essential to the 
Christian character must pronounce Christ’s first dis¬ 
ciples utterly unworthy to bear the name of Christians. 
But to this such persons may answer that the first dis¬ 
ciples were indeed only Christians in a very imperfect 
sense, and that before the Resurrection it could not be 
otheiwise. That event increased the number of dog¬ 
mas which Christians are required to receive; before 
it happened their creed was necessarily meagre, but 
since it has happened a Christian is not worthy of the 
name if he does not believe much more than any of 
Christ’s first followers. 

This view is plausible, and agrees at first sight with 
the conclusions at which we have already arrived. 
Christ, we have said, announced himself as the 
Founder and Legislator of a new state, and sum¬ 
moned men before him in that capacity. He did not 
invite them as friends, nor even as pupils, but sum¬ 
moned them as subjects. It was natural that when 
they first gathered round him, and even for some time 
afterwards, they should differ from other men in noth¬ 
ing but the loyalty which had led them to obey the 
Call. They understood that they had been summoned 
in order to receive law r s, but those law r s could not be 
promulgated all at once. In the mean time, while 
they were expecting the institutions that had been 
promised to them, though Christians in will, they 
could not be called Christians in the full sense of the 
word. Though out of them the Christian Church 
w r as to spring, yet they might w T ell be as unlike the 
Christian Church as the acorn is unlike the oak, or as 
the crew of the Mayflower was unlike the States of 


MEMBERSHIP IN CHRIST’S KINGDOM. 


«Si 


New England. But after the Church had received its 
Founder’s laws — laws which, like the Decalogue, 
contained not merely practical rules of life, but decla¬ 
rations concerning the nature of God and man’s rela¬ 
tion to him, then Christianity may have begun to 
mean no mere fidelity or loyalty to Christ’s person, 
but the practical obedience to his rules of life, and the 
unquestioning acceptance of his theological teaching. 

In a sense it is true that Christianity does mean 
this. Christ demanded as much, and w r as assuredly 
not satisfied with less. In the same w r ay every state 
demands of its citizens perfect patriotism and perfect 
obedience to the law's. Vet perfect patriotism and 
obedience are scarcely found in any citizen of any 
state ; but the state, though it demands so much, does 
not exclude the citizen who renders less. It is one 
thing to be an imperfect citizen, and another to be 
excluded from citizenship altogether. In like mannei 
it is one thing to be an imperfect Christian, and 
another to be utterly unworthy of the name. And it 
will be found, on further examination, that the Chris¬ 
tian Church is content with a much more imperfect 
obedience to its law than any secular state. It does 
not, indeed, promulgate laws without expecting them 
to be observed ; it constantly maintains a standard by 
which every Christian is to try himself; nevertheless, 
whereas every secular state enacts and obtains from 
its members an almost perfect obedience to its laws, 
the law r s of the Divine State are fully observed by 
scaicely any one, and the most that can be said even 
of Christians that rise decidedly above the average is 
that they do not forget them, and that by slow degrees 

4 * 


8a 


ECCE HOMO. 


they arrive at a general conformity with them. The 
reason of this will appear when we treat in detail of 
Christ’s legislation. It will then become clear that 
Christ’s legislation is of a nature infinitely more com¬ 
plex in its exactions upon every individual than any 
secular code, and that accordingly a complete obser¬ 
vance of it is infinitely difficult. For this reason it is a 
matter of universal consent among Christians that no 
man is to suffer exclusion from their society for any 
breach of Christ’s laws that is not of a flagrant and 
outrageous kind. Though it is common to hear a 
man pronounced no Christian for not believing in 
what is called the Atonement, yet no such excom¬ 
munication is passed upon men in whom some very 
unchristian vices, such as selfishness or reckless party- 
spirit, are plainly visible. The reason of our tolerance 
in the latter case is that we all acknowledge the im¬ 
mense difficulty of overcoming a vice when it has 
become confirmed, and we charitably give the man 
who has visibly not overcome his vices credit at least 
for struggling against them. 

This is quite right; only we ought to be just as 
tolerant of an imperfect creed as we are of an imper¬ 
fect practice. Everything which can be urged in ex¬ 
cuse for the latter may also be pleaded for the former. 
If the way to Christian action is beset by corrupt 
habits and misleading passions, the path to Christian 
truth is overgrown with prejudices, and strewn with 
fallen theories and rotting systems which hide it from 
our view. It is quite as hard to think rightly as it is 
to act rightly, or even to feel rightly. And as all 
allow that an error is a less culpable thing than a 


MEMBERSHIP IN CHRIST’S KINGDOM. 83 

crime or a vicious passion, it is monstrous that it 
6hould be more severely punished; it is monstrous 
that Christ, who was called the friend of publicans 
and sinners, should be represented as the pitiless 
enemy of bewildered seekers of truth. How could 
men have been guilty of such an inconsistency? By 
6peaking of what they do not understand. Men, in 
general, do not understand or appreciate the difficulty 
of finding truth. All men must act, and therefore all 
men learn in some degree how difficult it is to act 
rightly. The consequence is that all men can make 
excuse for those who fail to act rightly. But all men 
are not compelled to make an independent search for 
truth, and those who voluntarily undertake to do so 
are always few. They ought, indeed, to find pity and 
charity when they fail, for their undertaking is full of 
hazard, and in the course of it they are too apt to 
leave friends and companions behind them, and when 
they succeed they bring back glorious spoils for those 
who remained at home criticising them. But they 
cannot expect such charity, for the hazards and diffi¬ 
culties of the undertaking are known to themselves 
alone. To the world at large it seems quite easy to 
find truth and inexcusable to miss it. And no won¬ 
der! For by finding truth they mean only learning 
by lote the maxims current around them. 

Present to an ordinary man the maxim, 4 Love your 
enemies ; ’ you may hear him sigh as he answers that 
the saying is divine, but he fears he shall never prac¬ 
tise it. The reason is that he has an enemy and fully 
understands what it is to love him, and also what it 
is to hate him. Present to the same man the saying, 


ECCE HOMO. 




s 4 


‘ The Word was made flesh/ and what will he answer ? 
If he answered the truth he would say that he did 
not understand it; but he would not be quite an ordi¬ 
nary man if he could recognize his own ignorance so 
plainly. He will answer that he believes it, by which 
he means that as the words make no impression what 
ever upon his mind, so they excite no opposition in it 
Present the same two texts to a thinker. It is not 
impossible that the first may seem to him no hard 
saying; he may have no enemies, or his thoughtful 
habits may have brought his passions under control. 
But the second will overwhelm him with difficulty. 
For he knows what it asserts; he may have been 
accustomed to regard the Uyog as the technicality of 
an extinct philosophy, and may be staggered to find it 
thus imported into history and made the groundwork 
of what aspires to be a permanent theology. It is at 
this point, then, that the thinker will sigh, and you 
will hear him murmur that it is a great saying, but he 
fears he shall never believe it. 

Thus Christian belief is fully as hard a thing as 
Christian practice. It is intrinsically as hard, and 
those who do not perceive the difficulty of it under¬ 
stand it just so much less than those who do. Christ’s 
first followers, as we have seen, were far from pos¬ 
sessing the full Christian belief. Not till long after his 
departure did they arrive at those conclusions which 
are novs regarded as constituting Christian theology. 
In their position, we have admitted, this was almost 
inevitable. The great events upon which that theology 
rests, had either not happened, or not been maturely 
considered. These difficulties have been removed; 


MEMBERSHIP IN CHRIST’S KINGDOM. 85 

but have not other difficulties taken their place? Two 
may be mentioned which beset the modern inquirer 
into Christianity, and often make his theology as im¬ 
perfect and confused as that of the crowd of disciples 
who gathered round Christ. 

1. To the first Christians the capital facts of Christ’s 
life were future and therefore obscure ; to the moderns 
they gather an almost equal obscurity from being long 
past. The immensity of distance from which we con¬ 
template them raises many obstacles to belief. Before 
the theology can be inferred from the facts the/ must 
be well authenticated. Those who witnessed them or 
talked with those who had witnessed them were le- 
lieved from all trouble on this head. But in these 
days many fail in the preliminary undertaking. Com¬ 
plicated questions of evidence perplex them ; they are 
assailed with doubts of the possibility of transmitting 
from age to age a trustworthy account of any long 
series of incidents, especially a series including mira¬ 
cles. Suppose this difficulty surmounted, still the 
same remoteness of the life of Christ creates much 
difficulty in ascertaining the meaning of the words he 
used, and the exact nature of the doctrines he taught 
For those words and those doctrines have been sub¬ 
jected to the ingenuity of many generations of com¬ 
mentators. Spoken originally to men of the ancient 
world, they have received a succession of medieval 
and modern glosses, and if we put these aside and 
study the text for ourselves, our own training, the 
education and habits of the nineteenth century, dis¬ 
qualify us in a considerable degree for entering into 
its meaning. Only a well-trained historical imagina- 


86 


ECCE HOMO. 


tion, active and yet calm, is competent so to revive the 
circumstances of place and time in which the words 
were delivered as to draw from them, at a distance of 
eighteen hundred years, a meaning tolerably like that 
which they conveyed to those who heard them. 

2. Christ’s first followers had a sympathy with him, 
and his mode of teaching had an adaptation to them, 
which arose from the fact of the Master and disciples 
being contemporaries and fellow-countrymen. It is 
common to say of political constitutions that they must 
grow and cannot be made. Now the constitution 
which Christ gave to mankind has been found capable 
of being transplanted into almost every soil, but, not¬ 
withstanding, it is native to Palestine, and must have 
been embraced by those to whom it was first given 
with an ease and readiness which the Western nations 
cannot emulate. Christ’s constitution was not a new 
invention, but a crowning development of that which 
had existed in Palestine since the race of Israel had 
lived there. For centuries the Jews had been accus¬ 
tomed to receive truth by authoritative proclamation 
from the mouth of a prophet. How the truth came 
to the prophet he himself knew not; the onty account 
he could give of the matter was that it was put into 
his mouth by the Invisible King of the Theocracy 
and that he knew it to be truth. And those who lis¬ 
tened put the proclamation to no rigid test. They 
watched the prophet to see if he were honest, and if 
his proclamation shook their hearts and stirred their 
blood and seemed to bring them into the presence of 
the Invisible King, they then felt sure of its truth and 
safe in following it. Now of these prophets Christ 


MEMBERSHIP IN CHRIST’S KINGDOM 87 

was distinctly one, the greatest of all. He had the 
same intuitive certainty, for which he gave no reason, 
yet which no one could attribute to mere self-confi¬ 
dence, the same tone of unbounded authority assumed 
m the name of God, the same power of subduing the 
heart and arousing the conscience. Therefore those 
ivlio heard him found something familiar in his style. 
It reminded them of all that they were most accus» 
iomed to venerate, of Moses, Isaiah, Ezra, and they 
seemed to fall into their natural places when they sat 
at his feet and treasured up his words as oracles of 
truth. 

Now this mode of communicating and receiving 
truth is not indeed repugnant to the Western nations. 
From the time of Pythagoras and Heraclitus to the 
time of Carlyle and Mazzini, men have arisen at in¬ 
tervals in the West who have seemed to themselves to 
discover truth, not so much by a process of reasoning 
as by an intense gaze, and who have announced their 
conclusions in the voice of a herald, using the name 
of God and giving no reasons. And in the Western 
world these men have always met with a certain ac¬ 
ceptance ; they have generally succeeded in gathering 
round them followers of respectable character and un¬ 
derstanding ; and so fully is the possibility of such a 
prophetic discovery of truth recognized, that the Jew¬ 
ish prophets themselves have been received throughout 
the West with profound veneration. Still the respect 
for authority in knowledge is far less in the West than 
in the East. This is plain when we consider that the 
Jewish prophets seem to have been accepted by the 
whole nation, and that when thus accepted it was con* 


83 


ECCE HOMO. 


sidered presumption to deny anything that they had 
said. On the other hand, no one in the West ever 
reaches such an eminence as to have no detractors, 
and we are all bold enough to doubt what is said even 
by those whom we reverence most. The reason of this 
is that in the West a method has been laid down which 
places the gifted man and the ungifted in some degree 
on a level. It is still, no doubt, the gifted man in gen* 
eral who discovers truth, but when the discovery is 
made the ungifted man can test it and judge of it. 
Whereas it would appear that where the processes of 
thought have never been analyzed and reduced to 
method, there is no means of discovering the error of 
a gifted man, except through the emphatic contradic¬ 
tion of one who has won the reputation of being more 
gifted. 

It follows from this that when Christian theology 
passed into the Gentile world, when it diffused itself 
from the Mosaic East into the Socratic West, it must 
have encountered a new difficulty. The Jew who 
listened to Christ had been educated to rest in author¬ 
ity. He had believed in all that Moses had taught, in 
all that Isaiah had taught, and as soon as he was con¬ 
vinced that Christ was greater than Moses and Isaiah, 
he submitted with the same deference to his authority, 
and accepted all that Christ taught. When the life of 
Christ was put before the Greek, it affected him to a 
certain extent as it had done the Jew. He was seized 
with admiration and reverence. He regarded him as 
a divine man, and placed him first by the side of Or¬ 
pheus and Pythagoras, and in the end above both. 
But this veneration did not imply the same absolute 


MEMBERSHIP IN CHRIST’S KINGDOM. 89 

devotion of the intellect which it had invoked in the 
case of the Jew. For the Greek had other methods 
of arriving at truth besides imbibing it directly from 
the lips of wise men. He had a logic in which he 
had great confidence, and which had already led him 
to certain definite conclusions. If these conclusions 
should be at war with those authoritatively announced 
by Christ? Here was a difficulty at the very begin¬ 
ning, and in the course of time this difficulty has in¬ 
creased. The scientific methods laid down at first in 
Greece have been improved, and applied with such 
success that their credit is greatly risen. Men may 
still be disposed to believe in Christ’s infallible wis¬ 
dom, but their minds are now accustomed to work 
with great freedom upon all subjects, to have more 
respect for reasoning than for authority, and almost to 
deny knowledge to be knowledge when it rests only 
upon hearsay, and is not verified to the mind itself by 
demonstration, or at least probable evidence. Accus¬ 
tomed to test and weigh everything, and trained in the 
practice of suspending the judgment, they become not 
so much unwilling as positively unable to receive a 
proposition merely because it is authoritatively de¬ 
livered. 

Such are some of the difficulties of Christian belief. 
We conclude that though it is always easy for thought¬ 
less men to be orthodox, yet to grasp with any strong 
practical apprehension the theology of Christ is a 
thing as hard as to practise his moral law. Yet if lie 
meant anything by his constant denunciation of hypo¬ 
crites, there is nothing which he would have visited 
with sterner censure than that short cut to belief which 


9° 


ECCE HOMO. 


many persons take when, overwhelmed with the diffi¬ 
culties which beset their minds, and afraid of damna¬ 
tion, they suddenly resolve to strive no longer, but, 
giving their minds a holiday, to rest content with say¬ 
ing that they believe and acting as if they did. A 
melancholy end of Christianity indeed ! Can there be 
such a disfranchised pauper class among the citizens 
of the New Jerusalem? 

But when it is once acknowledged that to attain a 
full and firm belief in Christ’s theology is hard, then it 
follows at once that a man may be a Christian with¬ 
out it. It has been shown that the first of all require¬ 
ments made from the earliest Christians was faith, a 
loyal and free confidence in Christ. This was what 
made the difference between them and the careless 
crowd or the hostile Pharisee — that to them Christ 
was a beloved Master and friend. But this faith, if 
they had it but as a grain of mustard-seed, must have 
assured them that it was not in his character to exact 
of them what it was beyond their power to render, 
and to expect them at once to grasp truths which it 
might well take them all their lives to learn. And did 
he as a matter of fact do so ? Do we find him fre¬ 
quently examining his followers in their creed, and 
rejecting one as a sceptic and another as an infidel ? 
Sceptics they were all, so long as he was among them, 
a society of doubters, attaining to faith only at inter¬ 
vals and then falling back again into uncertainty. 
And from their Master they received reproofs for this, 
but reproofs tenderly expressed, not dry threats nor 
cold dismission. Assuredly those who represent 
Christ as presenting to men an abstruse theology, and 


MEMBERSHIP IN CHRIST’S KINGDOM. 91 

saying to them peremptorily, 4 Believe or be damned,’ 
have the coarsest conception of the Saviour of the 
world. He will reject, he tells us, those who refuse 
to clothe the naked or tend the sick, those whose 
lamps have gone out, those who have buried their 
talents, not those whose minds are poorly furnished 
vvilh theological knowledge. Incredulity and uncer- 
U inty, as long as it seemed honest, he always treated 
with kind consideration; and so disposed was he to 
the largest tolerance that on one occasion he refused 
to condemn one who, showing some respect for his 
character, yet disobeyed his first and most peremptory 
law — namely, that which commanded all persons to 
follow and attach themselves to him. And on this 
occasion he uttered words which breathe that con¬ 
tempt for forms and that respect for what is substan¬ 
tial which is the unfailing mark of a commanding 
spirit — 4 he that is not against us is on our part.’ 

To what conclusion, then, are we led by these re¬ 
flections upon the question of this chapter — the ques¬ 
tion, namely, what was involved in accepting Christ’s 
call. Those who gathered round him did in the first 
place contract an obligation of personal loyalty to him. 
On the ground of this loyalty he proceeded to form 
them into a society, and to promulgate an elaborate 
legislation, comprising and intimately connected with 
certain declarations, authoritatively delivered, concern¬ 
ing the nature of God, the relation of man to him, and 
the invisible world. In doing so he assumed the part 
of a Moses. Now the legislation of Moses had been 
absolutely binding upon the whole community. Dis¬ 
obedience to his laws had been punished by the civil 


ECCE HOMO. 


9<s 

judge, and so had every act which implied a concep¬ 
tion of the Divine Nature different from that which he 
had prescribed. The new Moses, we have seen, had 
no civil judges to enforce his legislation, but he repre¬ 
sented his unfaithful servants as being liable to prose¬ 
cution before the tribunals of the invisible world. lie 
described those tribunals as passing capital sentences 
upon some criminals, and dismissing them, as he ex- 
pressed it, into 4 the outer darkness’ — that is, beyond 
the pomcerium of that sacred city which is lighted by 
the glory of God. These are the traitors to the The¬ 
ocracy who have broken its essential obligations. 
Who then are they? And what are these essential 
obligations? 

Under the Mosaic law, as under all secular codes, 
certain definite acts were regarded as unpardonable. 
Moses punished the dishonoring of parents and idola¬ 
try with death, i. e. absolute exclusion. Now in this 
respect the new Moses is infinitely more tolerant. 
There are no specific acts which are unpardonable to 
the Christian. No amount of disobedience which can 
be named, no amount of disbelief or ignorance of doc¬ 
trine, is sufficient to deprive a man of the name of 
Christian. For it is held in the Christian Church that 
the man most stained with crime, and even most un¬ 
successful in breaking himself of criminal habits, and 
in the same manner the man whose speculative notions 
are most erroneous or despairing, may yet possess 
that rudiment of goodness which Christ called faith. 
But, on another side, the new Moses is infinitely more 
exacting than the old. For the most blameless obser¬ 
vance of the whole law is not enough to save the 


MEMBERSHIP IN CHRIST’S KINGDOM. 93 

Christian from exclusion, unless it has actually sprung 
from genuine goodness. It may spring from natural 
caution or long-sighted selfishness, and in the heart of 
the strict moralist there maybe no spark of faith. For 
such a moralist Christ has no mercy. And so it be 
came a maxim in the Christian Church that faith jus- 
lifies a man without the deeds of the law. 

Faith was described above as no proper Christian 
\ iline, but as that which was required of a man before 
he became a Christian. This virtue was to be taken 
by Christ and trained by his legislation and theology 
into something far riper and higher. But if the tram- 
ms: should through untoward circumstances almost 

o o 

entirely fail, and faith remain a scarcely developed 
principle, bearing fruit but seldom and fitfully in 
action — never is inconceivable — still in the Christian 
view it is life to the soul, and the faithful soul, how¬ 
ever undeveloped, is at home within the illuminated 
circle, and not in the outer darkness 


94 


CHAPTER VIII. 


BAPTISM. 


E have before us the new Moses surrounded by 



▼ ▼ those who are waiting to receive from his lips 
the institutions of a new Theocracy. They have been 
gathered out of the nation ; they form the elect part 
of it. But no constraint has been used in enlisting 
some and rejecting others. Those are here in whose 
hearts there is something which answers to such a 
trumpet-call as that which John and Christ had caused 
to resound through the land. Those whose lives are 
sunk in routine, and no longer capable of aspiring or 
willing or believing, are not here. But among the 
followers of the Legislator there is but one common 
quality. All, except a very few adventurers who 
have joined him under a mistake and will soon with¬ 
draw, have some degree of what he calls faith. All 
look up to him, trust in him, are prepared to obey 
him and to sacrifice something for him. He requires 
no more. This is a valid title to citizenship in the 
Theocracy. But in habits and character they differ as 
much as the individuals in any other crowd. Some 
are sunk in vice, others lead blameless lives; some 
have cultivated minds, others are rude peasants; some 
offer to Jehovah prayers conceived in the style of He¬ 
brew psalmists and prophets, others worship some 


BAPTISM. 


95 


monstrous idol of the terrified imagination or passion¬ 
less abstraction of philosophy. It is the object of the 
society into which this motley crowd are now gathered 
gradually to elevate each member of it, to cure him 
of vice, to soften his rudeness, to deliver him from the 
dominion of superstitious fears or intellectual conceits. 
But this is the point towards which the society tends, 
not that with which it begins. The progress of each 
citizen towards this perfection will bear proportion to 
his natural organization, to the force with which the 
influences of the society are brought to bear upon 
him, and to the stage of enlightenment from which he 
starts. With some it will be rapid, with others so 
slow as to be almost imperceptible. But the first pro¬ 
pelling power, the indispensable condition of progress, 
is the personal relation of loyal vassalage of the citizen 
to the Prince of the Theocracy. 

The test of this loyalty lay, as we have seen, in tire'' 
mere fact that a man was prepared to attach himself 
to Christ’s person and obey his commands, though by 
doing so some risk and some sacrifice was incurred. 
Christ, however, di'd not retain every one who accept¬ 
ed the Call about his person ; some he dismissed to 
their homes, laying upon them no burdensome com¬ 
mands. It was necessary therefore that some mark 
should be devised by which the follower of Christ 
might be distinguished, and by consenting to bear 
which he might give proof of his loyalty. Some 
initiatory rite was necessary, some public formality, in 
which the new volunteer might take, as it were, the 
military oath and confess his chief before men. If 
6uch a ceremony could be devised, which should al 


ECCE HOMO. 


96 

the same time indicate that the new votary had taken 
upon himself not merely a new sendee but an entirely 
new mode of life, it would be so much the better. 
Now there was already in use among the Jews the rite 
of baptism. It was undergone by those who became 
proselytes to Judaism. Such proselytes signified by 
submitting to it that they passed out of their secular 
life into the dedicated life of citizens in a Theocracy. 
The water in which they were bathed washed away 
fiom them the whole unhallowed and unprofitable 
past; they rose out of it new men into a new world, 
and felt as though death were behind them and they 
had been born again into a higher state. No cere- 
mony could be better adapted to Christ’s purpose than 
this. It was already in use. and had acquired a mean 
ing and associations which were universally under- 
stood. B}* calling upon all alike, Jews as well as 
Gentiles, to submit to it, Christ would intimate that 
he did not merely revive the old Theocracy but insti¬ 
tuted a new one, so that the children of Abraham 
themselves, members of a theocracy from their birth, 
had a past to wash away and a new life to begin, not 
less than the unsanctified Gentile. And at the same 
time, being publicly performed, it would serve as well 
as any other rite to test the loyalty* of the new recruit 
and his readiness to be known bv his Masters name. 

This ceremony, then. Christ adopted, and he made 
it absolutely binding upon all his followers to submit 
to it. In the fourth Gospel there is a story which 
illustrates in the most striking manner the importance 
which Christ attached to baptism. A man of ad¬ 
vanced years and influential position, named Nicode- 


BAPTISM. 


97 


mus, visited Christ, we are told, in secret, and entered 
into conversation with him. He began by an explicit 
avowal of belief in Christ’s divine mission. What he 
would have gone on to say we may conjecture from 
these two facts, namely, that he believed in Christ, 
and that nevertheless he visited him secretly. It 
appears that he hoped to comply with Christ’s de- 
mand of personal homage and submission, but to be 
excused from making a public avowal of it. And 
when we consider the high position of Nicodemus, it 
is natural to suppose that he hoped to receive such a 
special exemption in consideration of the services he 
had it in his power to render. He could push the 
movement among the influential classes; he could 
cautiously dispose the Pharisaic sect to a coalition 
with Christ on the ground of their common national 
and theocratic feeling; he might become a useful 
friend in the metropolis, and might fight against the 
prejudice which a provincial and Galilaean party could 
not but excite. These advantages Christ would se¬ 
cure by allowing Nicodemus to become a secret mem¬ 
ber of his Theocracy, and by excusing him, until a 
better opportunity should present itself, from publicly 
undergoing the rite of baptism. On the other hand, 
by insisting upon this he would at once destroy all the 
influence of Nicodemus with the authorities of Jeru¬ 
salem, and with it all his power of becoming a nursing 
father to the infant Church. When we consider the 
gieat contempt which Christ constantly expressed for 
forms and ceremonies, and in particular for those 
‘washings’ which were usual among the Pharisees, 
prepared to find him readily acceding to the 

5 


we are 


9 S 


ECCK HOMO. 


request of Nicodemus, Instead of which he shut the 
petitioner’s mouth by an abrupt declaration that there 
was no way into the Theocracy but through baptism. 
The kingdom of God, he insisted, though it had no 
locality and no separation from the secular states of 
mankind, though it had no law-courts, no lictors and 
no fasces, was yet a true state. Men were not to make 
a light thing of entering it, to give their names to the 
Founder at a secret interview, and immediately return 
to their accustomed places of resort and take up the 
routine of secular life where it had been left. Those 
who would enroll themselves among the citizens of it 
were to understand that they began their life anew, as 
truly as if they had been born again. And lest the 
Divine Society, in its contempt for material bounda¬ 
ries and for the distinctness which is given by unity of 
place, should lose its distinctness altogether and degen¬ 
erate into a theory or a sentiment or a devout imagina¬ 
tion, the initiatory rite of baptism, with its publicity 
and formality, was pronounced as indispensable to 
membership as that spiritual inspiration which is 
membership itself. 

Baptism being thus indispensable, we may be sur¬ 
prised to find it so seldom mentioned in the accounts 
of Christ’s life. We do not read, for example, of the 
baptism of his principal disciples. But it is to be 
remembered that the rite of baptism, though used by 
Christ, was not introduced by him, and that he recog¬ 
nized the Theocracy as having begun to exist in a 
rudimentary form before his own public appearance. 
The work of John was merged in that of Christ as a 
rKer in the sea, but Christ regards those who had 


BAPTISM. 


99 


received John’s baptism as being already members of 
the Theocracy. Since the time of John, he says, the 
kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent 
take it by force. Now Christ’s first followers were 
likely to be drawn from John’s circle ; partly because 
John himself directed his followers to Christ, partly 
because those who were affected by the eloquence of 
the one prophet were naturally formed to fall under 
the influence of the other. That the fact actually was 
so is attested by our biographies, which distinctly 
speak of Christ as finding his earliest disciples in the 
neighborhood and among the followers of the Baptist. 
This being the case, we may presume that the bulk of 
the first Christians received baptism from John, and 
found themselves alreadv enrolled in a Societv, the 
objects of which neither they nor perhaps the Baptist 
himself clearly understood, before they had ever seen 
the face of Christ. The Acts of the Apostles affords 
many proofs that the first Christians regarded John’s 
disciples as members of the Church, but imperfectly 
instructed. 


L.ofC. 


I GO 


CHAPTER IX. 

REFLECTIONS ON THE NATURE OF CHRIST’S 

SOCIETY. 



F the three parts into which our investigation is 


^ divided, Christ’s Call, his Legislation, and his 
Divine Royalty or relation to Jehovah, the first is now 
completed. We have considered the nature of the 
Call, its difference from that which was given to 
Abraham, the means which were taken to procure a 
body of men such as might suitably form the founda¬ 
tion of a new and unique Commonwealth, and the 
nature of the obligations they incurred in accepting 
the Call : 2^ /liv roc)’ x&v 7 oiwv 7Tukiuafi(xT0)v. 

But before we proceed to consider Christ’s Legisla¬ 
tion, it will be well to linger a while and reflect on 
what we have learnt. Having ascertained so far what 
Christ undertook to do and did, it will be well to com¬ 
pare it with other similar schemes and to form some 
opinion upon the success it was likely to meet with. 

Let us ask ourselves what was the ultimate object of 
Christ’s scheme. When the Divine Society was estab¬ 
lished and organized, what did he expect it to accom¬ 
plish? To the question we may suppose he would 
have answered, The object of the Divine Society is 
that God’s will may be done on earth as it is done in 
heaven. In the language of our own day, its object 
was the improvement of morality. Now this is no 


NATURE OF CHRIST’S SOCIETY. 


IOT 


strange or unusual object. Many schemes have been 
proposed for curing human nature of its vices and 
helping it to right thought and right action. We have 
now before us the outline of Christ’s scheme, and are 
in a condition to compare it with some others that 
have had the same object, and by so doing to discover 
in what its peculiarity consists. Now there is. one 
large class of such schemes with which mankind ■: ave 
occupied themselves diligently for many centuries, and 
which for the purpose of comparison with Christianity 
may be treated as a single scheme. Ever since the 
time of Socrates philosophy has occupied itself with 
the same problem ; it has been one of the principal 
boasts of philosophy that it teaches virtue and weeds 
vice out of the mind. At the present day those who 
reject Christianity commonly represent that in ad¬ 
vanced civilization it gives place naturally to moral 
philosophy. Their belief is that the true and only 
method of making men good is by philosophy; and 
that the good influence of Christianity in past ages 
has been due to the truths of moral philosophy which 
are blended in it with superstitions which the world 
in its progress is leaving behind. 

Of course there have been a multitude of systems 
of moral philosophy, which have differed from each 
other in a considerable degree, but they have all 
resembled each other in being philosophy. For the 
present purpose their differences are not important; 
the important thing is that there have been two con¬ 
spicuous attempts to improve mankind morally — the 
one by moral philosophy, the other by means of the 
Chiistian Church. Now, as nothing assists concep- 


102 


ECCE HOMO. 


tion so much as comparison, and it is hardly possil le 
to understand anything properly without putting it b}’ 
the side of something else, we may expect to gain 
some insight into Christ’s method of curing human 
nature by comparing it with that of the philosophers. 

At the first glance the two methods may seem to 
bear a strong resemblance, and we may suspect that 
the difference between them is superficial, and not 
more than is readily accounted for by the difference 
between manners and modes of thought in Greece and 
Palestine. It may seem to us that Socrates and Christ 
were in fact occupied in the same way ; certainly both 
lived in the midst of admiring disciples, whose minds 
and characters were formed by their words ; both dis¬ 
cussed moral questions, the one with methodical rea¬ 
soning as a Greek addressing Greeks, the other with 
the authoritative tone and earnestness of a Jew. 
There may seem here at first sight a substantial resem¬ 
blance and a superficial difference. But if we make a 
more careful comparison, we shall find that precisely 
the contrary is true, and that the difference is really 
radical, while the resemblance is accidental. It is 
true that Socrates, like Christ, formed a sort of soci¬ 
ety, and that the successors of Socrates formed socie¬ 
ties, which lasted several centuries, the Academy, the 
Porch, the Garden. But these philosophical societies 
merely existed for convenience. No necessary tie 
bound the members of them together. As the teacher 
had but one tongue and but one lifetime, it was obvi¬ 
ously better that he should take his pupils in large 
numbers, or, as it were, in classes, rather than teach 
every individual separately, and the> efore before the 


NATURE OF CHRISTAS SOCIETY. IO3 

invention of the printing-press a philosopher usually 
gathered a society round him. Doubtless, when this 
had been done, a certain esprit de corps sprang up 
among such societies, and they did, in special cases, 
approximate in some degree to churches. But that 
this was accidental, and not in the original design, 
appears from the fact that since the great diffusion of 
books, philosophers have almost ceased to form socie¬ 
ties, and content themselves, for the most part, with 
producing conviction in the minds of isolated students 
by published writings. If Socrates were to appear 
at the present day he would hardly bear that resem¬ 
blance to Christ which he bore at Athens. He would 
form no society. 

Now it was not from accident or for convenience 
that Christ formed a society. Nor were his followers 
merely united by the common desire to hear him 
speak, and afterwards by the friendly feelings that 
grew out of intimacy. We have seen already, and 
shall see yet more clearly in the sequel, that to organ¬ 
ize a society, and to bind the members of it together 
by the closest ties, were the business of his life. For 
this reason it was that he called men away from their 
homes, imposed upon some a wandering life, upon 
others the sacrifice of their property, and endeavored 
bv all means to divorce them from their former con 
nections in order that they might find a new home in 
the Church. For this reason he instituted a solemn 
initiation, and for this reason refused absolutely to 
give to any one a dispensation from it. For this rea¬ 
son too, as we shall see, he established a common 
feast, which was through all ages to remind Christians 


ECCE HOMO. 


104 

of their indissoluble union. Thus although the term 
disciples or learners is aj^plied in our biographies to 
the followers of Christ, yet we should not suffer this 
phrase to remind us of a philosophical school. Learn¬ 
ers they might be, but they loved better to speak of 
themselves as subjects or even ‘ slaves’ of Jesus Christ, 
and to each other he exhorted them to be as brothers. 

Thus the resemblance between Christ and the an¬ 
cient philosophers vanishes on examination. He was 
the founder of a society to which for a time he found 
it useful to give instruction ; they gave instruction to 
pupils who found it convenient to form themselves 
into a society for the sake of receiving it. Hence it 
was that while they assumed a name derived from the 
wisdom they {possessed and communicated, and were 
called philosophers, he took his title from the commu¬ 
nity he founded and ruled, and called himself King. 
But as the obvious resemblance between Christ and 
such a philosopher as Socrates vanishes on examina¬ 
tion, so we shall find that the obvious difference be¬ 
tween them — namely, that the one used reasoning 
and the other authority — appears upon examination 
to be radical and fundamental. It was the perpetual 
object of Socrates as much as possible to sink his own 
personality. He wished his arguments to have all the 
weight they might deserve, and his authority to count 
for nothing. Those who have considered the meaning 
of his famous irony know that it was not by any means 
what such a writer as Cicero supposes, a humorous 
device to make his conversation more racy and the 
confutation of his adversaries more unexpected and 
decisive. He professed to know nothing because he 


NATURE OF CHRIST’S SOCIETY. IO5 

wishej to exalt his method at his own expense. He 
wanted to give men not truths but a power of arriving 
at truths, and therefore what he found it most neces¬ 
sary to avoid was the tendency of his hearers to adopt 
his conclusions out of mere admiration for his wisdom 
and love for his person rather than rational convict ; on. 
By his determined and consistent abstinence from all 
dogmatic assertion he gradually trained men to believe 
in a method which, if only carefully used, discovered 
truth or verified it as surely, within ceitain limitations, 
in the hands of an ordinary man as in those of a sage. 
Deservedly he gained the greatest personal admiration, 
but his highest claim to it was the trouble he took to 
avoid it, and the tenacity with which he labored to set 
the tranquil and methodical operations of the intellect 
in the search of truth above the blind impulses of feel¬ 
ing and personal admiration. 

Now in all this we find Christ at the very opposite 
extreme. As with Socrates argument is everything 
and personal authority nothing, so with Christ per¬ 
sonal authority is all in all and argument altogether 
unemployed. As Socrates is never tired of depreci¬ 
ating himself and dissembling his own superiority to 
those with whom he converses, so Christ perpetually 
and consistently exalts himself. As Socrates firmly 
denies what all admit, and explains away what the 
oracle had announced, viz. his own superior wisdom, 
so Christ steadfastly asserts what many were not pre¬ 
pared to admit, viz. his own absolute superiority to all 
men and his natural title to universal royalty. The 
same contrast appears in the requirements they made 
of their followers. Socrates cared nothing what those 

5* 


ioo 


ECCE HOMO. 


whom he conversed with thought of him ; he would 
bear any amount of rudeness from them ; but he caied 
very much about the subject of discussion and about 
obtaining a triumph for his method. On the other 
hand, the one thing which Christ required was a cer¬ 
tain personal attachment to himself, a fidelity or 
loyalty; and so long as they manifested this, he was 
in no haste to deliver their minds from speculative 
error. 

We may be sure that so marked a contrast does not 
arise merely from the difference between a Semitic and 
European mind. The truth is that as the resemblance 
between the earliest Christian Church and a philo¬ 
sophical school is delusive, so is the resemblance be¬ 
tween Christ himself and any Greek philosopher. 
Christ had a totally different object and used totally 
different means from Socrates. The resemblance is, 
no doubt, at first sight striking. Both were teachers, 
both were prodigiously influential, both suffered mar¬ 
tyrdom. But if we examine these points of resem¬ 
blance we shall see that martyrdom was, as it were, 
an accident of the life of Socrates, and teaching in a 
great degree an accident of Christ’s, and that their in¬ 
fluence upon men has been of a totally different kind 
--that of Socrates being an intellectual influence upon 
thought, that of Christ a personal influence upon feel¬ 
ing. What real student of Socrates concerns himself 
with his martyrdom? It is an impressive page of 
history, but the importance of Socrates to men has no 
concern with it. Had he died in his bed he would 
still have been the creator of science. On the other 
hand, if we isolate Christ’s teaching from his life we 


NATURE OF CHRIST’S SOCIETY. 


I07 

may ome to the conclusion that it contains little that 
could not be found elsewhere, and found accompanied 
with reasoning and explanation. Those who fix their 
eyes on the Sermon on the Mount, or rather on the 
naked propositions which it contains, and disregard 
Christ’s life, his cross, and his resurrection, commit 
the same mistake in studying Christianity that the stu¬ 
dent of Socratic philosophy would commit if he studied 
only the dramatic story of his death. Both Socrates 
and Christ uttered remarkable thoughts and lived re¬ 
markable lives. But Socrates holds his place in his¬ 
tory by his thoughts and not by his life, Christ by his 
life and not by his thoughts. 

It follows that it is a mistake to regard Christianity 
as a rudimentary or imperfect moral philosophy. Phi¬ 
losophy is one thing, and Christianity quite another. 
And the difference between them lies here — that 
philosophy hopes to cure the vices of human nature by 
working upon the head, and Christianity by educating 
the heart. The philosopher works upon the man in 
isolation, though he may for convenience assemble his 
pupils in classes. He also abstains carefully from 
biassing his feelings by any personal motives and 
abjures the very principle of authority, making it his 
object to render his pupil his own master, to put him 
in possession of a rule by which he may guide his 
actions, and to relieve him from dependence upon any 
external guardianship. Christianity abhors isolation ; 
it gathers men into a society and binds them in the 
closest manner, first to each other, and next to Christ 
himself, wnorn it represents as claiming their enthu¬ 
siastic devotion on the ground of gratitude, and as 


ioS 


ECCK HOMO. 


exhibiting to them by a transcendent example, and also 
incidentally by teaching, but rather rhetorical than 
scientific teaching, the life they should lead. 

Christianity, then, and moral philosophy are totally 
different things, and yet profess to have the same ol> 
ject, namely, the moral improvement of mankind- 
This being the case, as it is probable that they are not 
precisely equally adapted to attain the object, it would 
seem tc follow that one of the two is unnecessary. 
But on consideration we shall find that each has its 
function, and that philosophy undertakes quite another 
sort of moral improvement than Christianity. The 
difference may be shortly expressed thus: — Both 
endeavor to lead men to do what is right, but philoso¬ 
phy undertakes to explain what it is right to do, while 
Christianity undertakes to make men disposed to do it. 
Wrong actions spring from two causes — bad moral 
dispositions, and intellectual misapprehensions. Good 
men do wrong perpetually, because they have not the 
mental training and skill which may enable them to 
discern the right course in given circumstances. They 
have good impulses, but they misconceive the facts 
before them, and miscalculate the effect of actions. 
Their intentions are right, but they take wrong means 
of carrying them out. There may be a conflict of 
good impulses, and in such cases one at least must re¬ 
main unindulged. Duty, in short, as it presents itself 
to us, is a very complicated matter. To do it with 
certainty a man must not be good merely but wise. 
He must have reflected deeply on human affairs and 
on social laws; he must have reduced the confusion 
of good feelings which exists at starting in the well 


NATURE OF CHRIST’S SOCIETY. 


IO9 

disposed mind to order and clearness. This, then, is 
vvlmt philosophy undertakes to help him to do. 

But suppose the good feelings wanting at the out¬ 
set. What will it avail in such a case that philoso¬ 
phy should point out the right course? When the 
man whose impulses are bad has plainly understood 
by the aid of philosophy which is the right course and 
which the wrong, what will he do? Clearly he will 
take the wrong. Some additional machinery is 
wanted which may evoke the good impulses, cherish 
them, and make them masters of the bad ones. If 
this is not done, what avails it to give a man the 
knowledge of what is right? It will but help him to 
avoid it. We have heard of a fruit which gave the 
knowledge of good, but it was ‘ knowledge of good 
bought dear by knowing ill.’ 

Now this machinery is what Christ undertakes to 
supply. Philosophers had drawn their pupils from the 
elite of humanity ; but Christ finds his material among 
the worst and meanest, for he does not propose merely 
to make the good better but the bad good. And what 
is his machinery? He says the first step towards good 
dispositions is for a man to form a strong personal 
attachment. Let him first be drawn out of himself. 
N ext let the object of that attachment be a person of 
striking and conspicuous goodness. To worship such 
a person will be the best exercise in virtue that he can 
have. Let him vow obedience in life and deatli to 
such a person ; let him mix and live with others who 
have made the same vow. He will have ever before 
his eyes an ideal of what he may himself become. 
His heart will be stirred by new feelings, a new world 


I IO 


ECCE HOMO. 


will be gradually revealed to him, and, more than 
this, a new self within his old self will make its pres¬ 
ence felt, and a change will pass over him which he 
will feel it most appropriate to call a new birth. This 
is Christ’s scheme stated in its most naked form ; we 
shall have abundant opportunities in the sequel of ex¬ 
pounding it more fully. But if philosophy undertakes 
to solve the same problem, what is its method? By 
what means does it hope to awaken good impulses in 
hearts that were before enslaved to bad ones ? By 
eloquent exhortation perhaps, or by the examples of 
life led philosophically. Nay, whatever effect these 
instruments may have, they are instruments of the 
same kind as those of Christianity. Example is a 
personal influence, and impassioned eloquence works 
upon the feelings. If we are to exchange Christianity 
for these, it must be because the philosophers can put 
before us an example more elevated, than that of 
Christ, and eloquence more impressive than that of 
the Sermon on the Mount. Philosophy, as such, 
works by reasoning, by enlightening the mind, by ex¬ 
posing miscalculations and revealing things as they 
are. Now by what process of this kind can the bad 
man be turned into the good? Where is the demon¬ 
stration that will make the selfish man prefer another’s 
interest to his own? Your dialectic may force him to 
acknowledge the right action, but where is the dialectic 
that shall force him to do it? Where is the logical 
dilemma that can make a knave honest? 

The truth is that philosophy has no instruments that 
it can use for this purpose. There exists no other 
such instrument but that personal One of which Christ 


NATURE OF CHRIST’S SOCIETY. 


1 i 1 


availed himself. And this personal influence it is the 
natural operation of philosophy in some degree to 
counteract. So far from creating good impulses, 
philosophy does something towards paralyzing and 
destroying them. For perpetual and absorbing mental 
activity blunts in some degree those feelings in which 
flie life of virtue resides ; at the same time it creates 
a habit of solitude, and solitude is the death of all but 
the strongest virtue. But the philosopher may answer 
to this that the more important part of moral im¬ 
provement is that which explains to us what it is right 
to do, and that good impulses are provided by nature 
with tolerable impartiality to all. He may think that 
good impulses do not require to be artificially provid¬ 
ed, or that they cannot be provided in any great degree 
by any machinery. Well! it is a question of fact. 
His own experience must decide it for each person. 
Assuredly there are vast moral differences in the 
people we meet, and we are able for the most part to 
refer those differences to some cause or other. Let 
the Christian principle be compared in its results with 
the philosophical one ; that is, let the virtue which 
lias arisen from contact and personal ties with the 
good be compared with that which is the unaided fruit 
of solitary reflection. Who is the philosophic good 
man ? He is one who has considered all the objects 
and consequences of human action; he has, in the 
first place, perceived that there is in him a principle 
of sympathy, the due development of which demands 
that he should habitually consider the advantage of 
others ; he has been led by reflection to perceive that ~ 
the advantage of one individual may often involve the 


ri2 


ECCE IIOMO. 


injury of several; he has thence concluded that it is 
necessary to la)' down systematic rules for his actions 
lest he should be led into such miscalculations, and he 
has in this reasonable and gradual manner arrived at 
a system of morality. This is the philosophic good 
man. Do we find the result satisfactory? Do we 
not find in him a languid, melancholic, dull and 
hard temperament of virtue? He does right perhaps, 
but without warmth or promptitude. And no won¬ 
der ! The principle of sympathy was feeble in him 
at the beginning for want of contact with those who 
might have called it into play, and it has been made 
feebler still by hard brain-work and solitude. He 
startles us at times by sudden immoralities into which 
he is betrayed by ingenuity unchecked by healthy feel¬ 
ing. His virtue has intermissions and fits of lassitude ; 
he becomes guilty of small transgressions for which he 
hopes to compensate by works of easy supererogation. 
Virtue thus exhibited does not excite in the beholder 
those ‘ strange yearnings ’ of devotion of which Plato 
spoke. No one loves such a man ; people feel for 
him an esteem mixed with pity. On the other hand, 
who is the good man that we admire and love ? How 
do men become for the most part 4 pure, generous, 
and humane ’ ? By personal, not by logical influences. 
They have been reared by parents who had these quali¬ 
ties, they have lived in a society which had a high 
tone, they have been accustomed to see just acts done, 
to hear gentle words spoken, and the justness and the 
gentleness have passed into their hearts and slowly 
moulded their habits, and made their moral discern¬ 
ment clear; they remember commands and pro- 


NATURE OF CHRIST’S SOCIETY. 113 

hibitions which it is a pleasure to obey for the sake of 
those who gave them ; often they think of those who 
may be dead and say, ‘ How would this action 
appear to him? Would he approve that word, or 
disapprove it?’ To such no baseness appears a small 
baseness because its consequences may be small, nor 
does the yoke of law seem burdensome although it is 
ever on their necks, nor do they dream of covering a 
sin by an atoning act of virtue. Often in solitude 
they blush when some impure fancy sails across the 
clear heaven of their minds, because they are never 
alone, because the absent Examples, the Authorities 
they still revere, rule not their actions only but their 
inmost hearts; because their conscience is indeed 
awake and alive, representing all the nobleness with 
which they stand in sympathy, and reporting their 
most hidden indecorum before a public opinion of the 
absent and the dead. 

Of these two influences — that of Reason and that 
of Living Example — which would a wise reformer 
reenforce? Christ chose the last. He gathered all 
men into a common relation to himself, and demanded 
that each should set him on the pedestal of his heart, 
giving a lower place to all other objects of worship, 
to father and mother, to husband or wife. In him 
should the loyalty of all hearts centre, he should be 
their pattern, their Authority, and Judge. Of him 
and his service should no man be ashamed, but to 
those who acknowledged it morality should be an 
easy yoke, and the law of right as spontaneous as the 
law of life; sufferings should be easy to bear, and 
the loss of worldly friends repaired by a new home in 


ECCE HOMO. 


M 4 

the bosom jf the Christian kingdom ; finally, in death 
itself their sleep should be sweet upon whose tomb¬ 
stone it could be written ‘ Obdormivit in Christo/ 


We have insisted upon the effect of personal influ¬ 
ence in creating virtuous impulses. We have described 
Christ’s Theocracy as a great attempt to set all the 
virtue of the world upon this basis, and to give it 
a visible centre or fountain. But we have used gem 
eralities. It is advisable, before quitting the subject, 
to give a single example of the magical passing of 
virtue out of the virtuous man into the hearts of those 
with whom he comes in contact. A remarkable story 
which appears in St. John’s biography, though it is 
apparently an interpolation in that place, may serve 
this purpose, and will at the same time illustrate the 
difference between scholastic or scientific and living or 
instinctive virtue. Some of the leading religious men 
of Jerusalem had detected a woman in adultery. It 
occurred to them that the case afforded a good oppor¬ 
tunity of making an experiment upon Christ. They 
might use it to discover how he regarded the Mosaic 
law. That he was heterodox on the subject of that 
law they had reason to believe, for he had openly 
quoted some Mosaic maxims and declared them at 
least incomplete, substituting for them new rules of 
his own, which at least in some cases appeared to 
abrogate the old. It might be possible, they thought, 
by means of this woman to satisfy at once themselves 
ard the people of his heterodoxy. They brought the 



NATURE OF CHRIST’S SOCIETY. 115 

woman before him, quoted the law of Moses on the 
subject of adultery, and asked Christ directly whether 
he agieed with the lawgiver. They asked for his 
judgment. 

A judgment he gave them, but quite different, both 
ill matter and manner, from what they had expected. 
In thinking of the 4 case ’ they had forgotten the wo¬ 
man, they had forgotten even the deed. What became 
of the criminal appeared to them wholly unimportant; 
towards her crime or her character they had no feeling 
whatever, not even hatred, still less pity or sympathetic 
shame. If they had been asked about her, they might 
probabl) have answered, with Mephistopheles, 4 She 
is not the first; ’ nor would they have thought their 
answer fiendish, only practical and business-like. 
Perhaps they might on reflection have admitted that 
their frame of mind was not strictly moral, not quite 
what it should be, that it would have been better if, 
besides considering the legal and religious questions 
involved, they could have found leisure for some 
shame at the scandal and some hatred for the sinner. 
But they would have argued that such strict propriety 
is not possible in this world, that we have too much 
on our hands to think of these niceties, that the man 
who makes leisure for such refinements will find his 
work in arrears at the end of the day, and probably 
also that he is doing injustice to his family and those 
dependent on him. 

This they might fluently and plausibly have urged. 
But the judgment of Christ was upon them, making 
all things seem new, and shining like the lightning 
from the one end of heaven to the other. He was 


ii 6 


ECCE HOMO. 


standing, it would seem, in the centre of a circle, 
when the crime was narrated, how the adultery had 
been detected Ik ihe very act. The shame of the 
deed itself, and the brazen hardness of the prosecu¬ 
tors, the legality that had no justice and did not even 
pretend to have mercy, the religious malice that could 
make its advantage out of the fall and ruin and igno¬ 
minious death of a fellow-creature — all this was ea~ 
geily and rudely thrust before his mind at once. The 
effect upon him was such as might have been pro¬ 
duced upon many since, but perhaps upon scarcely 
any man that ever lived before. He was seized with 
an intolerable sense of shame. He could not meet the 
eye of the crowd, or of the accusers, and perhaps at 
that moment least of all of the woman. Standing as 
he did in the midst of an eager multitude that did not 
in the least appreciate his feelings, he could not es¬ 
cape. In his burning embarrassment and confusion 
he stooped down so as to hide his face, and began 
writing with his finger on the ground. His tormentors 
continued their clamor, until he raised his head for a 
moment and said, ‘ He that is without sin among you 
let him first cast a stone at her/ and then instantly 
returned to his former attitude. They had a glimpse 
perhaps of the glowing blush upon his face, and 
awoke suddenly with astonishment to a new sense of 
their condition and their conduct. The older men 
naturally felt it first and slunk away ; the younger fol¬ 
lowed their example. The crowd dissolved and led 
Christ alone with the woman. Not till then could he 
bear to stand upright; and when he had lifted himself 
up, consistently with his principle, he dismissed the 


NATURE OF CHRIST’S SOCIETY. II7 

woman, as having no commission to interfere with 
the office of the civil judge. 

But the mighty power of living puiity had done its 
work. He had refused to judge a woman, but he had 
judged a whole crowd. He had awakened the slum¬ 
bering conscience in many hardened hearts, given 
them a new delicacy, a new ideal, a new view and 
leading of the Mosaic law. 

And yet this crowd was either indifferent or bitterly 
hostile to him. Let us imagine the correcting, elevat¬ 
ing influence of his presence upon those who, so far 
from being indifferent, were bound to him by the ties 
which bind a soldier to his superior officer, a clans¬ 
man to his chief, a subject to a king ruling by Divine 
right, ay, and by ties far closer. The ancient philoso¬ 
phers were accustomed to inquire about virtue, whether 
it can be taught. Yes! it can be taught, and in this 
way. But if this way be abandoned, and moral phi¬ 
losophy be set up to do that which in the nature of 
things philosophy can never do, the effect will appear 
in a certain slow deterioration of manners which it 
would be hard to describe had it not been described 
already in well-known words: 4 Sophistry and calcu¬ 
lation’ will take the place of 4 chivalry.’ There will 
be no more 4 generous loyalty,’ no more 4 proud sub¬ 
mission,’ no more 4 dignified obedience.’ A stain will 
no more be felt like a wound, and our hardened and 
coarsened manners will lose the 4 sensibility of princi¬ 
ple and the chastity of honor.’ 


ii8 


SECOND PART. 

CHRIST'S LEGISLATION . 

CHAPTER X. 

Christ’s legislation compared with 

PHILOSOPHIC SYSTEMS. 

W E have thus traced the rise of a monarchy, the 
purest and the most ideal that has ever existed 
among men. The most ideal, for in this monarchy alone 
the obedience of the subject was in no case reluctant or 
mercenary, but grounded upon a genuine conviction 
of the immeasurable superiority in goodness, wisdom, 
and power of the ruler. Such a superiority is always 
supposed to exist in a king, and to constitute the 
ground of his authority ; but this is in most cases a 
fiction which deceives no one, and only sustains itself 
in bombastic titles and hollow liturgies of court eti¬ 
quette. Where, however, the king has risen in dis¬ 
turbed. times from a private station, and has won his 
sceptre by merit, the theory is no mere constitutional 
fiction. Such a king is, to many of his subjects, the 
true master he claims to be to all; there are many 
who obey him from a voluntary loyalty, who do in 
their hearts worship his superiority, and who find 
their freedom in accepting his yoke. But even in this 


Christ’s legislation. 


119 

case there are many whose submission is reluctant 
and sullen, or else mercenary and hypocritical. There 
is always at least a minority whose subjection is se¬ 
cured by force. In Christ’s monarchy no force was 
used, though all power was at command; the obedi¬ 
ence of his servants became in the end, though not 
till after his departure, absolutely unqualified, even 
when it involved the sacrifice of life; and it was ob¬ 
tained from them by no other means than the natural 
influence of a natural superiority. 

This monarchy was essentially despotic, and might, 
in spite of the goodness of the sovereign, have had 
some mischievous consequences, if he had remained 
too long among his subjects, and if his dictation had 
descended too much into particulars. But he shunned 
the details of administration, and assumed only the 
higher functions of an heroic monarch — those of or 
ganization and legislation. And when these were 
sufficiently discharged, when his whole mind and will 
had expressed itself in precept and signed itself forever 
in transcendent deeds, he withdrew to a secret post 
of observation, from whence he visited his people for 
the future only in refreshing inspirations and great 
acts of providential justice. 

The time has now come for examining the legisla¬ 
tion which Christ gave to his Society. It has an 
important point of likeness and at the same ti;ne of 
unlikeness to the legislation which it superseded. 
The legislation which Jehovah gave to the Jews was 
always regarded by them not merely as a rule for 
their own actions, but as a reflection and revelation 
of the character of their Invisible King. The faithful 


120 


ECCE HOMO. 


Jew in obeying Jehovah became like Him. This 
inspiring reflection gave life and moral vigor to the 
Mosaic system. But that system labored at the same 
time under the disadvantage that Jehovah was known 
to His subjects only through His law. Only in pro¬ 
hibition and penalty was He revealed, only in thunder 
could His voice be heard. Now the law of Christ was 
in like manner a reflection of the mind of the law¬ 
giver ; but the new Jehovah made his character known 
not by his code merely, but by a life led in the sight 
of men, by ‘ going in and out ’ among the people. 
The effect of this novelty was incalculable. It was 
a moral emancipation; it was freedom succeeding 
slavery. The experience of daily life may explain this 
to us. It is a slavish toil to learn any art by text-books 
merely, without the assistance of a tutor ; the written 
rule is of little use, is scarcely intelligible, until we 
have seen it reduced to practice by one who can prac¬ 
tise it easily and make its justice apparent. The ease 
and readiness of the master are infectious ; the pupil, 
as he looks on, conceives a new hope, a new self- 
reliance ; he seems already to touch the goal which 
before appeared removed to a hopeless distance. It is 
a slavery when soldiers are driven against the enemy 
by the despotic command of a leader who does not 
share the danger, but the seivice becomes free and 
glorious when the general rides to the front. Such 
was the revival of spirit which the Jew experienced 
when he took the oath to Christ, and which he de¬ 
scribed by saying that he was no longer under the law 
but under grace. He had gained a tutor instead of a 
text-book, a leader instead of a master, and when he 


CHRIST’S LEGISLATION 


121 


learned what to do, he learned at the same time how 
to do it, and received encouragement in attempting it. 
And the law which Christ gave was not only illus¬ 
trated, but infinitely enlarged by his deeds. For 
every deed was itself a precedent to be followed, and 
therefore to discuss the legislation of Christ is to dis¬ 
cuss his character : for it may be justly said that Christ 
himself is the Christian law. 

We must therefore be careful not to consider Christ’s 
maxims apart from the deeds which were intended to 
illustrate them. There have been few teachers whose 
words will less bear to be divorced from their context 
of occasion and circumstance. But we find in our 
biographies the report of a long discourse, which, as 
far as we know, was suggested by no special incidents, 
and which seems to have been intended as a general 
exposition of the laws of the new kingdom. This dis¬ 
course is commonly called the Sermon on the Mount; 
it is recognized by all as the fundamental document 
of Christian morality, and by some it is regarded as 
constituting Christ’s principal claim upon the homage 
of the world. Naturally therefore it first attracts the 
attention of those who wish to consider him in his 
character of legislator or moralist. 

'The stvle of the Sermon on the Mount is neither 

J 

purely philosophical nor purely practical. It lefers 
throughout to first principles, but it does not state 
them in an abstract form ; on the other hand, it en¬ 
ters into special cases and detail, but never so far as 
to lose sight of first principles. It is equally unlike 
the early national codes, which simply formularized 
without method existing customs, and the early moral 
6 


122 


ECCE HOMO. 


treatises such as those of Plato and Aristotle, which 
are purely scientific. Of Jewish writings it resembles 
most the book of Deuteronomy, in which the Mosaic 
law was recapitulated in such a manner as to make 
the principles on which it was founded apparent; of 
Gentile writings it may be compared with those of 
Epictetus, Aurelius, and Seneca, in which we see a 
scientific morality brought to bear upon the struggles 
and details of actual life. It uses all the philosophical 
machinery of generalization and distinction, but its 
object is not philosophical but practical — that is, not 
truth but good. 

As then this discourse has a philosophic unity, let 
us try to discover w r hat that unity is. As it propounds 
to us a scheme of life founded upon a principle, let us 
try to state the principle. The work of all legislators, 
reformers, and philosophers is in one respect alike ; it 
is in all cases a protest against a kind of life which, 
notwithstanding, might seem to have its attractions, 
which, at any rate, suggests itself very naturally to 
men, and is not abandoned without reluctance. All 
reformers call on men to reduce their lives to a rule 
different from that of immediate self-interest, to live 
according to a permanent principle and not, as the 
poet says, 4 at random.’ Against the dominion of 
appetite all the teachers of mankind are at one : aH 
agree in repudiating the doctrine of the savage: 

I bow to ne’er a god except myself, 

And to my Belly, first of deities. 

To eat and drink your daily food and drink, 

This is the creed of sober-minded people, 


CHRIST’S LEGISLATION. 


123 


And not to fret yourself. But those who make 
Laws, and sophisticate the life of man, 

I bid them pack. 

In the time of Christ, when Socrates had been in 
his grave four hundred years, it was hardly necessary 
for a philosopher to inveigh in set terms against such 
naked self-indulgence. The rudimentary lessons of 
philosophy had now been widely diffused. But as 
Christ called the poor into his kingdom, and addressed 
his invitation to those whom no reformer had hoped 
before to win, he was at the trouble to reason with 
this grossest egotism. On one occasion he told a 
homely tale of a man who. absorbed in the pursuit and 
enjoyment of wealth, was struck at the very moment of 
complete self-satisfaction by sudden death, and com¬ 
pelled to relinquish the treasures he had sacrificed 
every lasting good to amass. At another time he went 
further, and described tortures and agonies which 
might await on the further side of death some whose 
lot had been most enviable on this. And in the dis¬ 
course before us he expostulates, though in a gentler 
tone, with the same class of sensualists. 

There are two principal ways of rebuking lawless 
sensuality: it is most important to consider whether 
Christ’s method coincides with either of them. The 
first is to admit the sensualist to be right in his end, 
but charge him with clumsiness in his choice of means. 
To get the greatest amount of pleasure, it may be 
said, is the only rational object which a man can j^ro- 
pose to himself; but to suppose that this object can be 
attained either by recklessly gratifying every desire as 
it arises, or by collecting huge heaps of the ordinary 


124 


ECCE HOMO. 


material of pleasure, such as money or food or fine 
clothes, is childish. Pleasure is a delicate plant, and 
cannot be cultivated without much study and practice. 
Any excess of it is followed by a reaction of disgust 
and by a diminution in the power of entertaining it.. 
If you would live in the constant enjoyment of it, 
yon must carefully ascertain how large a dose it will 
be safe to take at a time, and then you must drill 
yourself by a constant discipline never to exceed that 
dose. Again, what is pleasant to one man is not 
equally so to another; you must study your own dis¬ 
position ; you must learn to know your own mind, 
and not slavishly enjoy through another man’s senses. 
Once more, pleasant things, such as food or fine 
clothes, are indeed among the conditions of pleasure, 
but they do not by themselves constitute it. He who 
devotes himself to the acquisition of these, and neg¬ 
lects to prepare his own mind for the full enjoyment of 
them, will defeat his own object and sacrifice the end 
to the means. We must therefore tell the sensualist 
not that he loves pleasure too much, but that he ought 
to love it more, that he ought to seek it more exclu¬ 
sively, and not to suffer himself to be cheated by the 
mere external semblance and counterfeit of it. 

Of course it is quite unjust to represent this theory 
as repudiating moral virtue. Among the indispensa¬ 
ble conditions of pleasure virtue may very well be 
reckoned: it is perfectly open to an Epicurean philos¬ 
opher to declare all other instruments of pleasure to be 
inoperative and useless compared with or independent 
of virtue. And those who think that we should not 
make pleasure our chief object, yet commonly main* 


CHRIST’S LEGISLATION. 1 25 

lain that he who lives best will actually attain the 
greatest amount and the best kind of pleasure ; so that 
the most successful votary of pleasure would coincide 
with the ideal man of the very schools which most 
vehemently denounce pleasure-worship. The practi¬ 
cal objection to Epicureanism is not so much that it 
makes pleasure the summunz bo?iuin , as that it recom* 
mends us to keep this sunwium bonum always in view. 
For it is far from being universally true that to get a 
thing you must aim at it. There are some things 
which can only be gained by renouncing them. To 
use a familiar illustration : it is easy to breathe evenly 
so long as you do not think about it; but as soon as 
you try, it becomes impossible. Many of the moral 
virtues are of this kind. Simplicity of character can* 
not be produced by thinking of it; rather, the more 
you think of it the farther you travel into the opposite 
extreme of self-consciousness. The grace of humility 
is not to be won by constantly comparing yourself 
with others and cataloguing your deficiencies ; this 
method is more likely to issue in hypocritical self- 
conceit. Now, a practical survey of life seems to 
show that pleasure in its largest sense — a true and 
deep enjoyment of life — is also not to be gained arti¬ 
ficially Much of what Epicureans say is doubtless 
true and valuable ; our pleasures may be considerably 
heightened by a little common sense ; we often break 
the cup or upset it in our excessive eagerness to drain 
it to the bottom. Still, we destroy pleasure by making 
it our chief object; its essential nature is corrupted 
when it is made into a business : the highest perfection 
of it is not among the prizes of exertion, the rewards 


126 


ECCE HOMO. 


of industry or ingenuity, but a bounty of nature, a 
grace of God. By contrivance and skill only an in¬ 
ferior sort can be attained, to which the keenness, the 
glee, the racy bitter of the sweet, is wanting. And 
this is the utmost that can be attained; this is what 
can be made of pleasure by the most skilful artificers 
of it. What, then, would the poor and simple-minded 
gain from such a principle? Epicureanism popular¬ 
ized inevitably turns to vice ; no skill in the preachers 
of it will avail for a moment to prevent the obsc ene 
transformation. It would probably be safe to go far¬ 
ther, and say that Epicureanism means vice in all 
cases except where a rare refinement and tenderness 
of nature create a natural propensity to virtue so 
strong as to disarm the most corrupting influence. 

We need not, then, be surprised to find that Christ, 
whose purpose was entirely practical, and who was 
legislating not for a small minority but for mankind, 
did not place his reproof of sensuality on this ground. 
When he said, ‘ Fret not yourself about your life what 
ye shall eat, nor about your body what ye shall put 
on,’ he did not go on to say, ‘ Remember for what 
end food and clothing are intended; remember that 
they are only the appliances of pleasure, and make it 
j our object to gain pleasure not through these means 
only, but by every means within your reach, including 
moial virtue.’ But he proposes another object alto¬ 
gether — 4 the kingdom of God and his righteousness.’ 

There is another way in which it has been common 
to argue with the sensualist. It has been said that the 
sensualist makes bodily pleasure his object, and that in 
so doing he forgets that man possesses a soul as well 


Christ’s legislation. 


127 


a body. This soul, it is said, is the nobler part of 
the man; the body is but a base appendage more or 
less useful, but so far inferior that it should be treated 
as a slave, and so intractable that it requires to be 
coerced, punished, kept to hard labor, and stinted of 
sustenance and pleasure. The interests of the body 
are not worth considering; the man should occupy 
himself with those of the soul — that is, the acquisition 
cf knowledge, self-sufficiency, and virtue. But this 
reasoning, in the first place, convinces very few, and, 
in the second, has an injurious effect upon those whom 
it convinces. The soul and body are inextricably 
united. It is of no practical use to consider them 
apart; and if we do so, it is clear that the human 
body is not a base or mean thing, but, on the contrary, 
one of the most noble and glorious things known. 
Again, if it is to be made subservient to the soul, ex¬ 
perience abundantly shows that the soul does not 
advance its own interests by maltreating its slave. 
Discipline and coercion may sometimes be necessary, 
but the soul loses its tone and health if the interests of 
the body are not consulted, and if its desires are not in 
a moderate degree satisfied. And those who learn 
/rom these reasoners to depreciate the body, first be¬ 
come inhumanly cold to natural beauty and out of 
sympathy with the material universe, and secondly, 
^ hile they slight their own bodily comforts, disregard 
die physical well-being of their neighbors, and become 
unfeeling and cruel. 

Christ, then, as a practical legislator, did not depre« 
ciate the body. On the contrary, he showed, both in 


128 


ECCE HOMO. 


this Sermon and in his whole career, a tenderness of 
the bodily well-being of men, such as no philosophical 
school except the Epicureans had shown, and such as 
the Epicureans themselves had not surpassed. He 
spent the greater part of his short life in healing sick 
people, and of the comforts which he restored to others 
he did not disdain himself to partake. He was to be 
met at weddings; many of the discourses which his 
biographies preserve were suggested by the incidents 
of feasts and banquets at which he was present; and 
so marked was the absence of asceticism both in his 
own life and in that which he prescribed for his disci¬ 
ples, that his enemies called him a glutton and a wine- 
bibber, and he had to apologize for the indulgent 
character of his discipline by pointing with sad foresight 
to the sufferings which his followers would all too 
soon have to endure. But the words of this Sermon 
are even more striking. He divides himself at once 
from the ascetic and the Stoic. They had said, 
4 Make yourselves independent of bodily comforts ; ’ he 
says, 4 Ye have need of these things.’ But if the Epi¬ 
curean or the sensualist take advantage of these words 
and say, 4 If you have need of these things, make it 
your study to obtain them,’ he parts company not less 
decidedly with these, and says, 4 True pleasure is not 
thus to be had. It is the healthy bloom of the spirit 
which must come naturally or not at all. Those who 
think about it lose it, or, if not, produce with all their 
labor but a poor imitation of it. Self-consciousness 
and sensualism is the enemy of true delight. Solomon 
on his throne was gaudy; the lilies of the field are 


CHRIST S LEGISLATION. 


I29 


belter dressed. Epicurus in his garden was languid; 
the birds of the air have more enjoyment of their food.’ 

We are therefore to dismiss pleasure from our 
thoughts as a thing which we are indeed made to 
possess, yet are unable by our own efforts to obtain. 
W e are to expect that it will come of itself, and in the 
mean while we are to adopt a mode of life which has 
no reference to it. But if this rule should prescribe a 
course of conduct which so far from producing pleas¬ 
ure should involve us in the most painful difficulties 
and hardships, shall we then turn back as though the 
promise were unfulfilled? And if it should issue in 
death itself, and thus absolutely prevent to all appear¬ 
ance the promise from being fulfilled, what shall we 
think? Christ anticipates our perplexity. Such cases 
he tells us will frequently arise. Elis rule of life will 
often, nay, generally, involve us in hardships, and at 
certain periods in death itself. But the Creator of the 
world, our Father in Heaven, from whom alone, in all 
cases, genuine pleasure and satisfaction come, is more 
to be trusted than these adverse appearances. Pleas¬ 
ure shall assuredly be ours, but in no extremity are w*e 
to make it our object. You shall suffer and yet you 
shall enjoy. Both are certain, and it is not worth 
while to attempt to reconcile the apparent contradic¬ 
tion. 4 Some of you shall they put to death . . . and 
there shall not a hair of your head perish.’ 

This paradoxical position — that pleasure is neces¬ 
sary for us, and yet that it is not to be sought; that 
this world is to be renounced, and yet that it is noble 
and glorious — might, if it had been taken up by a 

6 * 


130 


ECCE HOMO. 


philosopher, have been regarded as a subtlety which it 
would be impossible to act upon. But as the law laid 
down by a King and Master of mankind, every word 
of whom was treasured up and acted out with devo¬ 
tion, it has had a surprising influence upon hi man 
affairs. In the times of the Roman Emperois there 
appeared a sect which distinguished itself by the assidu¬ 
ous attention which it bestowed upon the bodily wants 
of mankind. This sect set the first example of a 
homely practical philanthropy, occupying itself with 
the relief of ordinary human sufferings, dispensing 
food and clothing to the destitute and starving. At 
the same period there appeared a sect which was re¬ 
markable for the contempt in which it held human 
suffering. Roman magistrates were perplexed to find, 
when it became necessary to coerce this sect by penal 
inflictions, that bodily pains, tortures, and death itself 
were not regarded as evils by its members. These 
two sects appeared to run into contrary extremes. 
The one seemed to carry their regard for the body to 
the borders of effeminacy; the other pushed Stoical 
apathy almost to madness. Yet these two sects were 
one and the same — the Christian Church. And 
though within that body every conceivable corruption 
has at some time or other sprung up, this tradition has 
never been long lost, and in every age the Christian 
temper has shivered at the touch of Stoic apathy and 
shuddered at that of Epicurean indolence. 

But we have not yet, except by negatives, answered 
the question how Christ argued with the sensualist. 
We have discovered as yet only that he did not employ 


Christ’s legislation. 


l 3* 

two common arguments. For a lawless pursuit of 
bodily enjoyment he did not exhort him to substitute 
either a methodical pursuit of the same object or a 
pursuit of intellectual and moral well-being. What, 
then, did he substitute? What was that ‘ kingdom of 
God and his righteousness ’ which he bade men make 
♦lie fust object of their search? 


13a 


CHAPTER XL 

THE CHRISTIAN REPUBLIC. 

S EEK ye first the kingdom of God and his Tight’ 
eousness.’ This exhortation is precisely what we 
had reason to expect, for we have already remarked 
that the cry which John raised in the desert, ‘ The 
kingdom of heaven is at hand,’ was taken up by 
Christ, and that his life was devoted to proclaiming this 
new political constitution, to collecting adherents to 
it, and promulgating its laws. That kingdom of God 
into which he called men he elevates in this passage 
into the summum bonum of human life, and rqz>resents 
it as the secret of happiness and of all enduring good 
to belong to the divine society, and to understand and 
keep the rules prescribed for its members. 

Before we inquire into the nature of this society and 
of its rules, it is important to consider what is implied 
in the fact that Christ placed the happiness of man in 
a political constitution. The philosophical schemes 
which we have described Christ as rejecting consider 
man as an independent being, and provide for him an 
isolated happiness or welfare. The ideal Epicurean 
is described as indifferent to public affairs and falling 
kingdoms, and exempt from the pain alike of pity for 
the poor and jealousy of the rich. To be self-suffi¬ 
cient was a principal ambition of the rival school. 


THE CHRISTIAN REPUBLIC. 137 

But a member of a state is one who has ceased to 
have a personal object, and who has made his welfare 
dependent on that of others. He sacrifices himself to 
the body of which he has become a member. In 
giving up present pleasure he does not differ from the 
isolated man of the philosophers, but he differs from 
him in giving it up not prudentially that he may get 
more of it in the end or something better than it, but 
disinterestedly and for the sake of other people. It ia 
no doubt true that a man’s personal happiness is much 
increased by becoming a member of a community and 
having an object apart from himself; for, according to 
the paradox already stated, no man is so happy as he 
who does not aim at happiness. But that such per¬ 
sonal happiness is not the ultimate object of the social 
union is plain from this, that men are expected to 
sacrifice not a part of their happiness, but all of it, for 
the state, and to die in battle for a cause in which they 
may have no personal interest, and which they may 
even hold to be unjust. It was not with any personal 
object whatever, it was with no hope of reward in a 
future state, it was not for glory, if their poet may be 
believed, but in obedience to the laws of Sparta, that 
the three hundred laid down their lives in the pass of 
Thermopylae. Such a disinterested surrender is im¬ 
plied in the very notion of a political community. It 
is accordingly inculcated throughout this discourse as 
the great duty of those who enter the kingdom of 
God. They are to surrender all personal claims — not 
only, as Christ said often on other occasions, goods 
and pioperty, life and family ties, but other claims, 
which it seems not painful merely but degrading to 


f 34 


ECCE HOMO. 


waive — the claims of wounded honor, of just resent¬ 
ment ot Injuries. All these things we are to be pre¬ 
pared to surrender, as he said elsewhere, ‘ hoping for 
nothing again.’ 

And yet it may be said the sacrifice which Christ 
exacts is no more genuine than that recommended by 
die Epicurean, for he never fails to promise a full 
recompense in the world to come. Scarcely once in 
this Sermon does he inculcate self-sacrifice without a 
reference to the other side of the account—to the 
treasures God has in store for those who despise the 
gold and silver of the earth. And however much we 
may admire the Christian martyrs, yet how can we 
compare their self-devotion with that of the Spartan 
three hundred or the Roman Decius? Those heroes 
surrendered a//, and looked forward to nothing but the 
joyless asphodel meadow or 4 drear Cocytus with its 
languid stream.’ But the Christian martyr might well 
die with exaltation, for what he lost was poor com¬ 
pared with that which he hoped instantly to gain. 
The happiness he expected may not have been sen¬ 
sual ; it was not 4 the sparkle of female eyes, the 
handkerchief of green silk, the cap of precious 
stones,’ * that comforted him for the loss of this life, 
but he expected a personal and real, if not a sensual 
happiness. 

It is most true that Christ’s societv, like all other 
political societies, does promise happiness to its mem¬ 
bers ; it is further true that it promises this happiness, 
not as other societies in general, but to every individual 

* The vision of the dying Islamite, See Gibbon, cap li. 


THE CHRISTIAN REPUBLIC. 13^ 

member. The most complete self-sacrifice therefore, 
the love that gives up all, is impossible in the Christian 
Church, as it is rarely possible in any society, as one 
must suppose it impossible in the ideal society. Still 
the paradox must be repeated: though self-surrender 
lead in general, though it lead infallibly, to happiness, 
yet happiness is not its object. And if this seem a 
pedantic refinement outrageous to common sense, it 
will not appear so when we consider the nature of the 
self-surrender which Christ enjoins. For such self¬ 
surrender with such an object is simply impossible. 
A man can no doubt do any specific acts, however 
painful, with a view to his ultimate interest. With a 
view to his ultimate interest a man may fast, may im¬ 
pose painful penances on himself; nay, with a view to 
his ultimate interest a man may go two miles with one 
who has compelled him to go one, may turn the left 
cheek to one who has smitten him on the right, nay, 
may even ■pray for those that use him spitefully, 
although in doing so he will be guilty of the most 
hideous hypocrisy. But can a man, with a view to 
his ultimate interest, in order that he may go to 
heaven, love his enemies? 

It appears throughout the Sermon on the Mount 
that there was a class of persons whom Christ regard¬ 
ed with peculiar aversion — the persons who call them¬ 
selves one thins: and are another. He describes them 
by a word which originally meant an 4 actor.’ Prob¬ 
ably it may in Christ’s time have already become 
current in the sense which we give to the word 4 hypo¬ 
crite.’ But nc doubt whenever it was used the original 
sense of the word was distinctly remembered. And 


J3 6 


ECCE HOMO. 


in this Sermon, whenever Christ denounces any vice, 
it is with the words, 4 Be not you like the actors.’ In 
common with all great reformers, Christ felt that 
honesty in word and deed was the fundamental virtue ; 
dishonesty, including affectation, self-consciousness, 
love of stage effect, the one incurable vice. Our 
thoughts, words, and deeds are to be of a piece. For 
example, if we would pray to God, let us go into 
some inner room where none but God shall see us; 
to pray at the corner of the streets, where the passing 
crowd may admire our devotion, is to act a prayer. 
If we would keep down the rebellious flesh by fasting, 
this concerns ourselves only ; it is acting to parade 
before the world our self-mortification. And if we 
would put down sin, let us put it down in ourselves 
first; it is only the actor who begins by frowning at 
it in others. But there are subtler forms of hypocrisy, 
which Christ does not denounce, probably because 
they have sprung since out of the corruption of a 
subtler creed. The hypocrite of that age wanted 
simply money or credit with the people. His ends 
were those of the vulgar, though his means were dif¬ 
ferent. Christ endeavored to cure both alike of their 
vulgarity by telling them of other riches and another 
happiness laid up in heaven. Some of course would 
neither understand nor regard his words, others would 
understand and receive them. But a third class would 
receive them without understanding them, and, instead 
of being cured of their avarice and sensuality, would 
simply transfer them to new objects of desire. Shrewd 
enough to discern Christ’s greatness, instinctively be¬ 
lieving what he said to be true, they w T Ould set out with 


THE CHRISTIAN REPUBLIC. 


*37 


a triumphant eagerness in pursuit of the heavenly 
riches, and laugh at the short-sighted and weak-minded 
speculator who contented himself with the easy but in¬ 
significant profits of a worldly life. They would prac¬ 
tise assiduously the rules by which Christ said heaven 
was to be won. They would patiently turn the led 
cheek, indefatigably walk the two miles, they would 
bless with effusion those who cursed them, and pray 
fluently for those who used them spitefully. To love 
their enemies, to love any one, they would certainly 
find impossible, but the outward signs of love might 
easily be learnt. And thus there would arise a new 
class of actors, not like those whom Christ denounced, 
exhibiting before an earthly audience and receiving 
their pay from human managers, but hoping to be paid 
for their performance out of the incorruptible treasures, 
and to impose by their dramatic talent upon their Fa¬ 
ther in heaven. 

Christ’s meaning, however, is not doubtful. The 
principle is distinctly laid down. Our thoughts and 
deeds are to be of a piece. A pious and devout life 
will undoubtedly win for a man the reverence of the 
multitude, and yet Christ tells us when we pray we are 
to think of God and not of the credit we may gain. 
And so though by loving our neighbor and our enemy 
we shall win heaven, we are not to think of the heaven 
we shall win, we are to think of our neighbor and our 
enemy. 

Noble-minded men * have often been scandalized by 
the appearance which Christ’s law is made to wear, as 


* Schiller, for example. 


'33 


ECCE HOMO. 


if it were a system in which all virtue is corrupted by 
being made mercenary. The same moralists, however, 
would have been among the first to assert that the only 
true and lasting happiness is that which is gained by 
the practice of virtue. Christ adds nothing to this ex¬ 
cept a promise that those exceptional cases in which 
virtue appears to lose its reward shall prove in the end 
not to be exceptions. By defining virtue to consist in 
love , he brings into prominence its unselfish character ; 
and by denouncing at the same time with vehemence 
all insincerity?- and hypocrisy, he sufficiently shows 
with what horror he would have regarded any inter¬ 
ested beneficence or calculating philanthropy which 
may usurp the name of love. 

It may, therefore, be affirmed that Christ’s Kingdom 
is a true brotherhood founded in devotion and self- 
sacrifice. Nothing less, indeed, would have satisfied 
those disciples who had begun to feel the spell of his 
character. A philosophic school or sect may found 
itself on the prudential instincts of man, may attract 
empty hearts, and attach them by a loose bond to each 
other. But a kingdom stands on self-devotion, and the 
hearts of Christ’s disciples were not empty. They had 
not gathered themselves round him to be told how they 
might avoid the evils of life, but to know what they 
might do for him, how they might serve him, how the } 7 
might prove their loyalty to him. It was the art of 
self-devotion that they wished to leam, and he taught 
it as a master teaches, not sparing words but resting 
most on deeds ; by the Sermon on the Mount, but also 
by the Agony and the Crucifixion. 


*39 


CHAPTER XII. 

UNIVERSALITY OF THE CHRISTIAN 

REPUBLIC. 

W E discover, then, that Christ’s society resembles 
other political societies in requiring from its 
members a disinterested devotion and patriotism. But 
to understand its essential nature it is necessary to 
know, not in what respects it resembles other things 
of the same kind, but in what respects it differs from 
them. We must therefore continue our investigation 
until we discover this difference. 

It is one of the most obvious features of the Sermon 
on the Mount that it treats men as standing in the rela¬ 
tion of brothers to one another under a common Father 
in heaven. Let us consider what is involved in this. 

The earliest condition of mankind of which we have 
any knowledge was one of perpetual war. Homer 
describes a state of society in which a man was safe in 
the possession of his lands and flocks only so long as 
there was strength enough in his right arm to defend 
them. As soon as the primitive man began to grow 
old and to lose his vigor, there was danger that his 
neighbors would drive his cattle and encroach upon 
his estate. Ulysses in the early part of his wander¬ 
ings, before he has lost his fleet and army, lands on 
the Thracian coast, and finds a city. Fie instantly 


140 


ECCE HOMO. 


sacks it and kills all the inhabitants. This is not be* 
cause there has been a quarrel, but because there has 
been no treaty; the normal condition of men at that 
time being mutual enmity. To this mutual enmity, 
however, there is an exception established by an im¬ 
perative law of nature. Persons of the same family 
live in perpetual alliance. This seems to have been 
originally the only tie between man and man, the only 
consideration that could prevent them from murdering 
each other. Peleus in his old age will be in the great¬ 
est danger if he is deprived of Achilles, and the very 
children will persecute the child Astyanax after his 
father’s death. Woe to the orphan, and woe to the 
old man who has not surrounded himself with chil¬ 
dren ! They are the only arrows with which his 
quiver can be filled, the only defenders whom he can 
trust to speak with his enemies in the gate. 

Thus in the earliest condition of things there was 
only one kind of community. The primitive man had 
no obligations, no duties, to any except his parents, his 
brothers, and his parents’ brothers and their families. 
When he met with a man unrelated to him he would 
without hesitation take his life and his property. But 
the life and property of a relation w r ere sacred, and 
the Greeks held that there were certain supernatural 
powers called Erinyes who vindicated the rights of 
relatives. This sense of relationship being natural and 
universal and extending even to the brute creation, we 
cannot imagine a time when the family with its rights 
and obligations did not exist. But the family is a com* 
munity which constantly expands until it loses itself in 
a more comprehensive one. It becomes a clan, the 


THE CHRISTIAN REPUBLIC. 


H 1 

members of which may in many cases be strangers to 
each other, while they are, notwithstanding, bound 
together by the sacred tie of relationship. Again, in 
primitive times, when men had little power of verify- 
ing facts or weighing evidence, relationship was often 
supposed to exist between persons who were reallv of 
different stocks. Any resemblance was supposed to 
furnish a proof of relationship, and so those who spoke 
the same language were presumed to be descended 
from a common ancestor. In this way the family 
passed ultimately into the nation, and political consti¬ 
tutions and codes of law came to bind men together, 
grounded all alike on the supposition, true or false, 
that they were relations by blood. When states had 
once been founded and began to flourish, men began 
to associate with each other more freely ; other grounds 
of obligation besides blood-relationship were gradually 
admitted, and finally Rome, binding together in the 
unity of common subjection a number of tribes strange 
to each other, gave a basis of fact and law to universal 
morality. But in states which had been isolated, and 
had mixed little with foreigners either by conquest or 
by trade, the original tradition did not die out, and 
men continued to say and to think that they owed 
obligations only to those of the same blood. This 
was especially ti*ue of the Jews, the most isolated of 
all ancient nations. Their common descent from 
Abraham was always present to their minds, and was 
tire tie which bound them together. A sense of obli¬ 
gation they expressed by the formula, 1 He also is a 
child of Abraham their very religion was a worship 
paid to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Tacob. And 


ECCE HOMO. 


I42 

Christ himself sometimes adopted the same style, as 
when he reproved the vice of selfishness by represent¬ 
ing Dives as repudiated by Abraham, and Lazarus 
welcomed to his bosom in the invisible world. 

It was, therefore, no novelty when, in the Sermon 
on the Mount, Christ described those who entered the 
Kingdom of God as standing in the relation of broth¬ 
ers to one another. In doing so he only used the 
ordinary language of what may be called ethnic mo¬ 
rality. The novelty lies here that he does not ground 
the mutual obligations of men upon a common descent 
from Abraham, but upon a common descent from 
God. 

It is not difficult to see what follows from this 
change of style. By substituting the Father in Heaven 
for father Abraham, Christ made morality universal. 
This phrase, which places not a certain number of 
men, but all men, in the relation of brotherhood to 
each other, destroys at once the partition-wall between 
Jew and Gentile, Greek and barbarian, German and 
Welsh, white man and Negro, or under whatever 
names the families of the earth have justified and 
legalized the savage instinct of antipathy. It is not to 
be imagined that the thought was new or original; 
Christ was no theorist or philosopher, but a legislator. 
The thought had existed in the mind of Socrates, 
when he called himself a citizen of the world ; it had 
become a commonplace of the Stoic philosophy; it 
was taken up by Roman jurists, and worked into the 
imperial legislation. But to work it into the hearts 
and confxiences of men required a much higher and 
rarer power, the power of a ruler, not of a philoso- 


TIIE CHRISTIAN REPUBLIC. 


*43 

pher. It may have been the thought of a Julianus or 
a Papinianus that all the Roman world had a right 
to Roman citizenship ; but it was the Ccesar, Antoni¬ 
nus Caracalla, who gave the right; and, in like man¬ 
ner, what a Socrates and a Zeno and many Hebrew 
prophets had claimed for men, was given to them by 
this Edict from the Mount. 

The first law, then, of the Kingdom of God, is that 
all men, however divided from each other by blood or 
language, have certain mutual duties arising out of 
their common relation to God. It may, however, be 
urged that this law was superfluous. Without deny¬ 
ing the fact that at an earlier time nations had re¬ 
garded each other as natural enemies, without main¬ 
taining that tire philosophic doctrine of a unity in the 
human race had had much practical influence, it may 
still be urged that the Roman Empire had already 
realized that unity which philosophers had imagined 
and to which Christ now gives a late sanction. By 
tire Roman conquests a number of different nations 
had been brought together and united under a com- 
mon government. In the period immediately succeed¬ 
ing their subjugation they had, no doubt, been treated 
by their conquerors with insolent oppression. It was 
plain that proconsuls and propraetors had little sense 
of duty in regard to their subjects. The principal ob¬ 
ject of their government was to preserve to the state 
its acquisition, and the secondary object to reap some 
personal advantage from it. But time had produced 
a great improvement. The sense of duty, which at 
first was wanting, had been aw r akened. A morality 
not founded on blood-relation had certainly come into 


*44 


ECCE HOMO. 


existence The Roman citizenship had been thrown 
open to nations which were not of Roman blood. A 
hundred years before the Sermon on the Mount was 
delivered Cicero had roused public indignation against 
an unjust and rapacious propraetor. Since that time 
foreigners had been admitted by the Roman state to 
the highest civic honors. And in the centuries that 
followed, the process by which nations were being 
fused into one universal society went steadily forward 
without any help from Christian maxims. So sig¬ 
nally. so much more than in later and Christian ages, 
were national distinctions obliterated under the Em¬ 
pire, that men of all nations and languages competed 
freely under the same political system for the highest 
honors of the state and of literature. The good Au¬ 
relius and the great Trajan were Spaniards. So were 
Seneca and Martial. Severus w r as an African. The 
leading jurists were of Oriental extraction. 

All this is true. A number of nations which had 
before waged incessant war with one another had 
been forced into a sort of unity. What court-poets 
call a golden age had set in. Round the whole shore 
of the Mediterranean Sea, and northward to the Dan¬ 
ube and beyond the British Channel, national antipa¬ 
thies had been suppressed, and war had ceased, while 
the lives of men were regulated by an admirable code 
of laws. Yet, except to court-poets, this age did not 
seem golden to those who lived in it. On the con¬ 
trary, they said it was something worse than an iron 
age ; there was no metal from which they could name 
it. Never did men live under such a crushing sense 
of degradation, never did they look back with more 


THE CHRISTIAN REPUBLIC. 


*45 

bitter regret, never were the vices that spring out of 
despair so rife, never was sensuality cultivated more 
methodically, never did poetry curdle so readily into 
satire, never was genius so much soured by cynicism, 
and never was calumny so abundant or so gross or so 
easily believed. If morality depended on laws, or 
happiness could be measured by comfort, this would 
have been the most glorious era in the past history of 
mankind. It was in fact one of the meanest and foul¬ 
est, because a tone or spirit is necessary to morality, 
and self-respect is needful to happiness. 

Ancient morality, as it has been already remarked, 
was essentially national and exclusive. Its creed was 
that a man is born not for himself, but for his parents, 
his family, and the state. The state was surrounded 
by others with which, unless some treaty had been 
concluded, it was at war. To do as much good as 
possible to one’s own state, and as much harm as pos¬ 
sible to all other states, was therefore the whole duty 
of a man. Those who performed this duty manfully 
might look for the protection of the gods who lived in 
temples built for them within the walls of the city, and 
who were feasted and enriched with the spoils of other 
nations. Now this whole scheme of morality had 
been overturned by the Roman conquests. For they 
had destroyed the very principle of nationality both 
among conquerors and conquered. Among the con¬ 
quered nations, for their gods had left them, and their 
freedom, which, as they said themselves, was half 
their virtue, and their isolation, which was the other 
half, were taken away. Among the Romans them¬ 
selves, for they had been compelled to raise the con- 

7 


146 


ECCE HOMO. 


quered to their own level, and they knew not what to 
make of their new condition when their own country 
no longer required to be defended or enriched, and 
there were scarcely any more foreign countries to be 
invaded. Yet, their poets thought, they might at least 
have occupied themselves with conquering these. 
‘ Shame on you ! ’ says Lucan. ‘ You turned your 
arms against each other, when you might have been 
sacking Babylon .’ 

The nations were thus forced into a unity for which 
they were not prepared. Ethnic morality, the light 
under which their fathers had lived, which had given 
them self-respect, strength in hardships, and a sense 
of satisfaction in the hour of death, was now useless, 
and universal morality was a thing unknown, or at 
least untried. On this new path they were cheered 
by no great memories, guided by no acknowledged 
rules. When they treated a foreigner as a fellow-cit¬ 
izen, the spirits of their fathers seemed to reproach 
them, and they derived but cold comfort from the 
approval of Stoic philosophers. Men did what was 
right with the feeling that they were doing wrong. 
The most mortal evil that can befall mankind had be¬ 
fallen them — conscience took the wrong side. 

It was not a repetition of the Stoic maxim in more 
emphatic terms that purified the human conscience. 
It was the personality of Christ exciting a veneration 
and worship which effaced in the minds of his follow¬ 
ers their hereditary and habitual worships. No the¬ 
ory, says a Greek poet, will throw down ancestral tra¬ 
ditions. This is true ; but they can be overthrown b) 
a passionate personal devotion. Father Abraham 


THE CHRISTIAN REPUBLIC. 


*47 


seceding from his Chaldean community in obedience 
to a divine Call, and thus dividing Jew from Gentile 
as strongly as he united Jew with Jew, would have 
resisted many generations of Rabbinical teachers. 
Father ./Eneas bearing from the flames of Troy the 
venerated symbols of Roman unity and isolation 
would have been too strong for the Stoic philosophy. 
Both alike faded like phantoms, both alike were super¬ 
annuated, the moment the heart is touched. And in 
order that those who worshipped his person might not 
forget his fundamental law, Christ assumed a title ex¬ 
pressing the universality of his dominion, as kings 
have often borne titles taken from the nations they 
have added to the empire, and called himself the Son 
of Man. 

How opportune this Edict of Comprehension was 
we may learn by considering for a moment the writ¬ 
ings of Juvenal. This poet reflects the deep dissatis¬ 
faction, the bitter sense of degeneracy and degrada¬ 
tion, which characterized his age. Now what is the 
ground of his despondency? what provokes the sav¬ 
age indignation, which made him a satirist? If we 
examine, we shall find that it is one and the same 
grievance which inspires almost every fierce tirade, 
namely, the mixture of races. Life seems to him not 
worth having when the Roman cannot walk the Via 
Sacra unelbowed by Greeks and Syrians. All dis¬ 
tinctions, he complains, are lost; the Roman worships 
the Egyptian monster-deities whom his own national 
gods vanquished at Actium ; Orontes empties itself 
into Tiber; it is time for a Roman to turn his back on 
his own city when it has become a thing of no account 


148 


ECCE HOMO. 


that his infancy breathed the air of Aventine and was 
fed upon the Sabine berry. Now this very wiiter is a 
Stoic, familiar of necessity with the speculations which 
made the wise and good of all nations citizens alike in 
the city of God. So little power had any such philo¬ 
sophic theory to supply the place of a morality founded 
on usage, on filial reverence, on great and dear exam¬ 
ples. Yet that theory, if it had presented itself to 
him, not as an ambitious speculation of philosophers, 
but as a sober account of an actual fact, would have 
dried up the source of his satire. He would not have 
regretted the downfall of national distinctions, if they 
had been abolished by an aiP^ovity equal in his mind 
to that which had created them To minds perplexed 
like his it was, therefore, the beginning of a new life 
and hope when a new Romulus gathered mto a new 
republic the chaos of nations. The city of God, of 
which the Stoics doubtfully and feebly spoke, was now 
set up before the eyes of men. It was no insubstan¬ 
tial city, such as we fancy in the clouds, no invisible 
pattern such as Plato thought might be laid up in 
heaven, but a visible corporation whose members met 
together to eat bread and drink wine, and into which 
they were initiated by bodily immersion in water. 
Here the Gentile met the Jew whom he had been 
accustomed to regard as an enemy of the human race ; 
the Roman met the lying Greek sophist, the Syrian 
slave the gladiator born beside the Danube. In broth¬ 
erhood they met, the natural birth and kindred of each 
forgotten, the baptism alone remembered in which they 
had been born again to God and to each other. 

The mention of slaves and gladiators reminds us 


THE CHRISTIAN REPUBLIC. 


M9 


that ethnic morality had, besides putting discord be¬ 
tween states, created certain positive institutions. As 
under that system obligations subsisted only between 
blood-relations, and each tribe might without provoca¬ 
tion or pretext attack and slaughter any foreign com¬ 
munity, so had it the right of reducing foreigners to 
slavery. Whether death or slavery should be inflicted 
on the conquered enemy was, in fact, not a question 
of morality or mercy, but simply of calculation. In 
either case the captive was deprived of life so far as 
life is a valuable or desirable possession ; if he was 
allowed to exist, it was not for his own sake, but as a 
property more or less valuable to his master. Not 
that the lot of the slave was always or inevitably 
miserable ; natural kindness, which was not killed but 
only partially paralyzed by ethnic morality, and which 
was always essentially Christian, might indefinitely 
and in an indefinite number of instances mitigate the 
bitterness of his lot; but theoretically he had no more 
claim to consideration or care at the hands of his 
master, no more right to happiness, than if he had 
been slain at the’ moment of his capture. Everywhere 
then throughout the Roman world there was a class 
of outcasts whom it was supposed lawful to treat with 
heartless cruelty, such as would have been held un¬ 
lawful if the objects of it had been fellow-citizens. 
The ground on which this right had originally been 
founded was that the class in question consisted eitliei 
of prisoners taken in war, or of the descendants of 
such prisoners; and that as they were protected by no 
treaties, their lives and fortunes were at the disposal 
of their captors, or of others to whom the rights of 
the captoi had passed by purchase. 


*5° 


ECCE HOMO. 


Now although Christ never, so far as we know, had 
occasion to pronounce judgment on the question of 
slavery, yet we do not require the testimony of his 
earliest followers (declaring that in Christ Jesus there 
is neither bond nor free) to assure us that, considered 
in this sense, slavery could not be reconciled with his 
law. The Edict of Comprehension conferred citizen¬ 
ship upon the whole outcast class. Under it, what¬ 
ever law of mutual help and consideration had ob 
tained between citizen and citizen, began to obtain 
between the citizen and his slaves. The words 4 for¬ 
eign * and 4 barbarous ’ lost their meaning; all nations 
and tribes were gathered within the pomoerium of the 
city of God; and on the baptized earth the Rhine and 
the Thames became as Jordan, and every sullen desert- 
girdled settlement of German savages as sacred as 
Jerusalem. 

Therefore it is that St. Paul, writing to Philemon, 
exhorts him to receive back Onesimus 4 no longer as 
a servant, but as a brother beloved.’ It may, how¬ 
ever, surprise us that he does not exhort Philemon to 
emancipate him. But this does not seem to occur to 
the apostle ; and it has been made matter of complaint 
against the Christian Church, that, though it an¬ 
nounced a principle fundamentally irreconcilable with 
slavery, it never pronounced the institution itself un¬ 
lawful. Nor can it be denied that, instead of telling 
the s£ave that he was wronged, and exhorting him in 
the name of human nature, degraded in his person, to 
take the first opportunity of shaking off the yoke, the 
first Christian teachers exhorted him to obedience, 
and declared it particularly meritorious to be submis* 


THE CHRISTIAN REPUBLIC. *51 

sive to a cruel and unreasonable master, while, on the 
other hand, they exhorted the masters not to set their 
slaves free, but simply to treat them well. 

The explanation of this is, that under the name of 
slavery two essentially different institutions were con¬ 
founded, only one of which was irreconcilable with 
Christian principle. Slavery may mean the degrada¬ 
tion of a person into a thing, the condition of a man 
who has no claims upon his fellow-men. This is es¬ 
sentially monstrous, and has always been condemned 
by Christianity. But it may mean merely a condition 
of dependence, differing from that of a free servant 
only in its being compulsory, and in the rights of the 
master being transferable by purchase. The latter 
kind of slavery does not depend upon the theory of 
ethnic morality; it does not deny that the slave has 
rights or claims upon his master; it depends upon the 
assumption of a natural inferiority in the slave incapa¬ 
citating him for judging of his own rights or for living 
in happiness except under guardianship or restraint. 
Now, as Christianity, in asserting the unity of the 
human race, and their equality in the sight of God 
and Christ, did not declare war upon the social sys¬ 
tem which arranges men according to 4 degree, prior¬ 
ity, and place,’ and binds them together by ties of 
loyalty and obedience, as it did not deny, but strongly 
confirmed, the authority of the father over the child 
and the husband over the wife, an authority grounded 
on a similar assumption of a natural inferiority and 
incapacity for liberty in the woman and child, it acted 
consistently in withholding liberty from the slave 
while it gave him citizenship. As it often happens 


152 


ECCE HOMO. 


that a usage introduced for one reason is afterwards 
retained for another, so had slavery, originally the 
most savage abuse of ethnic morality, come to be dif¬ 
ferently understood and differently defended. The 
servile condition has a natural tendency to degrade 
human nature; of the slaves of antiquity a large pro¬ 
portion belonged originally to the lowest and rudest 
nations; and from these two causes it was a patent 
and undeniable fact that the slave population was in 
an incalculable degree inferior to the free. It might 
reasonably be considered rebellion against an ordi¬ 
nance of nature to give freedom to those who appeared 
so little fit for it; and if it seems to us a false and 
cruel argument to turn the consequence of slavery into 
a justification of it, and to pronounce the slave natu¬ 
rally incapable of liberty because he had been artifi¬ 
cially incapacitated for it, yet we must remember that 
the social speculations of antiquity were seldom dic¬ 
tated by philanthropy, and we must not expect the 
refined tenderness of adult Christianity from its earli¬ 
est developments. 

False and cruel to a certain extent the argument 
was ; but if the earliest Christian teachers had rejected 
it absolutely, and inferred from their Master’s Law of 
Comprehension that all men are not only to be re¬ 
spected alike, but to be treated in the same manner, 
put in possession of the same privileges, directed to 
seek happiness in the same pursuits, they would have 
run into the opposite extreme. Christ declares all 
men. alike to be the sons of God, and the least of man¬ 
kind he adopts as a brother. By doing so he makes 
all mankind equal to this extent, that the interests and 


THE CHRISTIAN REPUBLIC. 153 

the happiness of all members of the race are declared 
to be of equal importance. But he does not declare 
them to be equally gifted. Each individual is equally 
entitled to whatever dignity he is capable of support¬ 
ing ; but the early Church, at least, was in possession 
of no proof that all men are equally capable of sus¬ 
taining the dignity of a free condition. If this dis 
covery has been made since, there was at that time 
nothing that could suggest it. Dependence and sub¬ 
jection were then regarded as the natural condition of 
women; the son under the Roman law was literally 
his father’s slave, incapable of owning a penny of per¬ 
sonal property, even though he might have held the 
highest honors of the state. And if such appeared to 
the Roman jurists to be a natural ordinance, even when 
there was no visible inferiority between the father and 
the son who was thus enslaved to him, who could ques¬ 
tion that the slave population, visibly characterized by 
all the faults, vices, and deficiencies that make men 
unfit for freedom, were intended by nature to live 
under the control of those whom she had made wise 
and intelligent? 

In the Universal Republic therefore, while in one 
sense there were no slaves, in another sense slavery 
was admitted. The position given to the outcast class 
was what we may call citizenship without emancipa¬ 
tion. Their welfare was regarded as not less impor¬ 
tant than that of the most exalted. They were Christ’s 
brothers, and he had pronounced the solemn sentence, 
‘ Whoso oftendeth one of these little ones that believe 
in me, it were better for him that a mill-stone should 
be hanged round his neck, and that he should be cast 

y * 


ECCE HOMO. 


154 

into the depths of the sea/ This sentence contained 
the abolition of all the horrible usages of ancient 
slavery, the tortures of the ergastulum, the gladiatorial 
show. But, notwithstanding, the slave was left under 
a control which might be harsh and rigorous, if harsh¬ 
ness and rigor appear necessary, because it was be¬ 
lieved that men were called to different offices in life, 
and that while it was the glory and dignity of some to 
feel nothing between themselves and God, to others it 
was given only to see God reflected in wiser and 
nobler spirits than themselves. 


CHAPTER XIII. 


THE CHRISTIAN A LAW TO HIM SELT. 



UR investigation has led us to three conclusions 


respecting Christ’s legislation : — i, that he does 
not direct us to adopt a private or isolated rule of life, 
but to occupy ourselves with the affairs of the society; 
2, that he expects us to merge our private interests 
absolutely in those of this society"; 3, that this society 
is not exclusive, but catholic or universal — that is, 
that all mankind have a right to admission to it. Or 
we should rather say readmission, for Christ does not 
regard the society as new, but rather as one which had 
subsisted from the beginning in the Maker’s plan, but 
had been broken up through the jealousies and narrow¬ 
ness of men. For this reason, though baptism is the 
essential condition of membership, yet those who re¬ 
fuse baptism are not to be treated as the foreigner 
would be treated under the system of ethnic morality, 
but to be pitied as fellow-citizens who madly refuse to 
take up their birthright, to be abandoned only after 
their perverseness has shown itself incorrigible, and 
even then not to be punished, but left to the judgment 
of God'. 

A universal society, then, being founded, and a life 
strictly social and civic being enjoined upon its mem¬ 
bers, by what rule is this social life to be guided? 


*5 6 


ECCE HOMO 


How are Christians to behave towards each other? 
This question must be carefully separated from others 
which naturally connect themselves with it. We are 
not now concerned with the constitution of the society, 
its system of magistrates and public assemblies — 
questions which in fact Christ left entirely to the 
decision of the society itself. Nor do we here con¬ 
sider the injunctions which he laid upon them, so to 
speak, as a politician — for example, concerning the 
way in which they were to comport themselves towards 
the governments of the earth, or what they were to do 
in times of persecution. Nor are we concerned at 
present with the theology of the society, nor with its 
relation to God and Christ. When, however, we have 
gone through the recorded discourses and sayings ol 
Christ, and eliminated everything in them referring to 
theology, or the occasional duties of the society, or 
arising out of the polemic in which Christ occasionally 
engaged with the Jewish doctors, w r e may be surprised 
to find how small is the residue which contains his 
system of morality. The truth is that he did not leave 
a code of morals in the ordinary sense of the word — 
that is, an enumeration of actions prescribed and pro¬ 
hibited. Two or three prohibitions, two or three com¬ 
mands, he is indeed recorded to have delivered, but on 
the greater number of questions on which men require 
moral guidance he has left no direction whatever. 

Are we then, after being brought together into a 
universal society, left without a rule by which to guide 
our intercourse in this society? Not so; we are to 
consider what is the origin of laws in human commu¬ 
nities. They arise from a certain instinct in human 


THE CHRISTIAN A LAW TO HIMSELF. 157 

nature, which it is not necessary here to analyze, but 
which supports itself by a constant struggle against 
other anarchic and lawless instincts, and which is so 
far the same in all men that all the systems of law 
which have ever appeared among men are, in certain 
grand features, alike. This we may call the law¬ 
making power in men. Now any one set to organize 
a new community, if he had it in his power either to 
deliver an elaborate and minute code of rules to the 
community, or to increase indefinitely the law-making 
power in each member of it, would certainly without 
hesitation choose the latter course. For, not to speak 
of the trouble that would be saved both in compiling 
the code at first and in remodelling it as new circum¬ 
stances demanded new provisions, the morality of the 
citizens would be of a much higher and more vital 
kind if they could be made, as it were, a law to them¬ 
selves, and could always hear, in the language of 
Hebrew poetry, a voice behind them saying, 4 This is 
the way, walk ye in it.’ 

Now this w r as what Christ undertook to do. Instead 
of giving laws to his Society, he would give to every 
member of it a power of making laws for himself. 
He frequently repeated that to make the fruit of a tree 
good you must put the tree into a healthy state, and, 
slightly altering the illustration, that fruit can only be 
expected from a fruit-tree, not from a thistle or thorn. 
The meaning of this plainly is that a man’s actions 
result from the state of his mind ; that if that is healthy 
they will be right, and if not, they will be wrong. 
Such language was new in the mouth of a legislator, 
but not at all new in itself. It was an adoption ol the 


158 


ECCE HOMO. 


style of philosophy. Philosophers had always made 
it their study to bring their minds into a healthy con¬ 
dition, 4 frui ei 7 iendato animo * When, however, we 
inquire what Christ considered a healthy condition of 
the mind to be, we do not find him in agreement with 
philosophers. The law-making power of which men¬ 
tion has been made, which, raised to predominance, 
issues in an unerring tact or instinct of right action, 
was differently conceived by him and by them. They 
placed it in reason, and regarded passion as the antag¬ 
onistic power which must be controlled and coerced 
by it. Christ also considers it necessary to control the 
passions, but he places them under the dominion not 
of reason but of a new and more powerful passion. 
The healthy mind of the philosophers is in a com¬ 
posed, tranquil, and impartial state ; the healthy mind 
of Christ is in an elevated and enthusiastic state. 
Both are exempt from perturbation and unsteadiness, 
but the one by being immovably fixed, the other by 
being always powerfully attracted in one direction. 

This is collected from the following facts. Christ 
was once asked to pronounce which commandment in 
the law was the greatest. He answered by quoting a 
sentence from the Book of Deuteronomy, in which de¬ 
moted love to God and man is solemnly enjoined upon 
the Israelite, and by declaring that upon this com¬ 
mandment the whole Mosaic and prophetic legislation 
depended. In other words, he declared an ardent, 
passionate, or devoted state of mind to be the root of 
virtue. Again, he directed one who declared that he 
had kept all the commandments and asked what re¬ 
mained for him to do, if he would be perfect, to sell 


THE CHRISTIAN A LAW TO HIMSELF. 1 59 

all his goods and give them to the poor, and devote 
himself to the kingdom of God. What does this im¬ 
ply but that the morality which is sound must be no 
mere self-restraint, no mechanical movement within 
prescribed rules, no mere punctiliousness, but ardent 
and active, exceeding duty and outstripping require¬ 
ment? He taught the same doctrine in a striking 
form when he bade his followers exhibit their virtue 
conspicuously, so that all might see it and none might 
mistake it. They were to be, he said, a city set on a 
hill, a candle set on a candlestick and lighting the 
whole room, salt "with a strong taste in it. These 
exhortations are peculiarly striking, because no teacher 
has ever insisted more strongly than Christ on the 
unobtrusive character of true virtue. We are not, he 
says, to sound a trumpet before us ; if we would pray 
we are to go into a closet and shut the door behind 
us; we are to do good by stealth ; our left hand is not 
to know what our right hand does. These two sets 
of injunctions appear, as is often the case in the many- 
sided wisdom of Christ, to be in direct contradiction 
to each other. But they are not really so ; if taken 
together there results from them the following per¬ 
fectly clear and consistent doctrine : True goodness 
does not study to attract attention ; nevertheless, wher¬ 
ever it appears, such is the warmth, fire, and energy 
inherent in it, that it does and must attract attention. 
And so strongly does Christ feel this, that he solemnly 
declares the virtue which does not make itself felt and 
recognized to be worth nothing. If the very salt have 
lost its taste, what remains? it is good for nothing but 
to be thrown away and trodden under foot. 


lOo ECCE HOMO. 

All other faults or deficiencies he could tolerate, but 
he could have neither part nor lot with men destitute 
of enthusiasm. He thought it a bad, almost a fatal 
sign, in one who proposed to become a disciple that 
he asked leave first to bid farewell to his relations. 
Another asked permission to bury his father, and was 
advised to let the dead (that is, those whose hearts 
were not animated by any strong passion or impulse) 
bury thei: dead. And once when it seemed that the 
magic of his presence and words would draw his 
entire audience into the number of his followers, 
alarmed lest he should find himself surrounded by 
half-hearted or superficial and merely excitable ad¬ 
herents, he turned suddenly upon the crowd, and with 
one of those startling expressions w r hich he seldom, 
and yet like all great reformers sometimes, employed, 
declared that he could receive no man who did not 
hate his father and mother and his own life. 

These passages will help us to understand the alle¬ 
gory of the strong man armed keeping secure posses¬ 
sion of his palace until he is expelled by a stronger 
than himself. The strong man armed is the anarchic 
passions of human nature, against which the law¬ 
making power contends. Nothing can control them, 
says Christ, but a stronger passion still. And he goes 
on to explain that an empty condition of mind, a 
quiescence or temporary absence of the anarchic pas¬ 
sion, is a hollow and dangerous state. The demon 
may leave his abode for a time, but he finds no suste¬ 
nance abroad, and so at last back he comes hungry 
and brings congenial guests with him. 

It was fully understood in the early Church that this 


T.Hr CHRISTIAN A LAW TO HIMSELF. l6l 

enthusiastic or elevated condition of mind was the dis¬ 
tinctive and essential maik of a Christian. St. Paul, 
having asked some converts whether they had received 
this divine inspiration since their conversion, and re¬ 
ceiving lor answer that they had not heard there was 
any such divine inspiration abroad, demanded in 
amazement what then they had been baptized into. 

Befoie we investigate the nature of tne enthusiasm 
or divine inspiration which Christ projDOsed to kindle 
in the minds of his disciples, let us consider what is 
involved in the fact that he made morality dependent 
upon such an enthusiasm, and not upon any activity 
of the reasoning power. It is the essence of morality 
to place a restraint upon our natural desires in such a 
manner that in certain cases we refrain from doing 
that which we have a natural desire to do, or force 
ourselves to do that to which we feel a repugnance. 
Now, he who refrains from gratifying a wish on some 
ground of reason, at the same time feels the wish as 
strongly as if he gratified it. The object seems to him 
desirable, he cannot think of it without wishing for it; 
he can, indeed, force his mind not to dwell upon the 
object of desire, but so long as the mind dwells upon 
it so long it desires it. On the other hand, when a 
stronger passion controls a weaker, the weaker alto¬ 
gether ceases to be felt. For example, let us suppose 
two men, one of whom has learnt and believes that he 
owes fidelity to his country, but has no ardor of patri¬ 
otism, and the other an enthusiastic patriot. Suppose 
a bribe offered to these two men to betray their con if 
try. Neither will take the bribe. But the former, if 
we suppose the bribe large enough, will feel his fingers 


ECCE HOMO. 


102 

itch as he handles the gold ; his mind will run upon 
the advantages it would bring him, the things he might 
buy, the life he might lead, if he had the money; he 
will find it prudent to divert his mind from the subject, 
to plunge desperately into occupations which may ab¬ 
sorb him until the time of temptation has passed. The 
other will have no such feelings; the gold will not 
make his fingers itch with desire, but perhaps rathci 
seem to scorch them; he will not picture to himself 
happiness or pleasure as a consequence of taking it, 
but, on the contrary, insupportable degradation and 
despair; his mind will need no distraction, it will be 
perfectly at ease however long the period of temptation 
may continue. • 

The difference between the men is briefly this, that 
the one has his anarchic or lower desires under con¬ 
trol, the other feels no such desires; the one, so far as 
he is virtuous, is incapable of crime, the other, so far 
as he is virtuous, is incapable of temptation. 

Now, as Christ demands virtue of the latter or en¬ 
thusiastic kind, we shall be prepared to find that he 
prohibits evil desires as well as wrong acts. Accord¬ 
ingly, it is one of the most remarkable features of his 
moral teaching that he does not command us to regu- 
late or control our unlawful desires, but pronounces it 
unlawful to have such desires at all. A considerable 
part of the Sermon on the Mount is devoted to the ex¬ 
position of this doctrine. Christ quotes several pro¬ 
hibitions from the Mosaic law, and proceeds to declare 
the desire from which each prohibited act springs 
equally culpable with the act itself. This is at first 
sight perplexing, because the desire out of which an 


THE CHRISTIAN A LAW TO HIMSELF. 1 63 

unlawful act springs is often or generally a mere nat¬ 
ural appetite which in itself is perfectly innocent. The 
truth is, that Christ requires that such natural appetite, 
when the gratification of it would be unlawful, he not 
merely left ungratified, but altogether destroyed, and a 
feeling of aversion substituted for it by the enthusiasm 
of virtue within the soul. 

This higher form of goodness, though of course it 
had existed among the heathen nations, yet had never 
among them been sufficiently distinguished from the 
lower to receive a separate name. The earliest Chris¬ 
tians, like the Christians of later times, felt a natural 
repugnance to describe the ardent enthusiastic good¬ 
ness at which they aimed by the name of virtue. This 
name suited exactly the kind of goodness which Christ 
expressly commanded them to rise above. They there¬ 
fore adopted another. Regarding the ardor they felt 
as an express inspiration or spiritual presence of God 
within them, they borrowed from the language of re¬ 
ligious worship a word for which our equivalent is 
i holy and the inspiring power they consistently called 
the Spirit of Holiness or the Holy Spirit. Accord¬ 
ingly, while a virtuous man is one who controls and 
coerces the anarchic passions within him so as to con¬ 
form his actions to law, a holy man is one in whom a 
passionate enthusiasm absorbs and annuls the anarchic 
passions altogether, so that no internal struggle takes 
place, and the lawful action is that which presents it¬ 
self first and seems the one most natural and most easy 
to be done. 

But now, of what nature is the enthusiasm Christ 
requires? We have seen that a particular passion may 


164 


ECCE HOMO. 


raise a man above a particular sin. The enthusiastic 
patriot is incapable of treason. He who passionately 
loves one woman may be made by that love incapable 
of a licentious thought; and an elevated self-love may 
make it impossible for a man to lie. But these pas» 
sions are partial in their operation. The patriot, in¬ 
capable of public treason, may be capable of private 
treachery. The chaste man may be a traitor. The 
honest man may be cruel. What is the passion, if 
such a passion there be, which can lift a man clean 
out of all sin whatever? 

As it has been shown that Christ founded a society 
the peculiarity of which is that it was intended to in¬ 
clude the whole human race, it may occur to us that 
the esprit de corps which would naturally spring up 
in such a society may be the passion we seek. It 
would be a passion of the same nature as patriotism, 
but without its exclusiveness. For the patriot, though 
incapable of injuring his own country, is not less but 
perhaps more capable of being unjust or treacherous 
towards foreign nations, while the Christian patriot, 
whose country is the world, w r ill, it may be supposed, 
be equally incapable of wrong-doing towards all alike. 

But it must be remembered that an enthusiastic at¬ 
tachment to a state or a community is very different 
from an attachment to the members of that community. 
The patriot, it has just been said, is not by any means 
above the temptation to private injustice or treachorv, 
nor will he become more so when his country is the 
world. An example was given in the first French 
Revolution of the operation of this passion of universal 
patriotism. It was in the cause not so much of France 


THE CHRISTIAN A LAW TO HIMSELF. 1 65 

as of universal man that the revolutionary party agi¬ 
tated and fought, and they displayed a disregard of 
private rights and individual happiness quite as catho¬ 
lic as their philanthropy. Universal patriotism, taken 
by itself, is not Christianity but Jacobinism. 

The all-purifying passion must, it is plain, be a pas¬ 
sion for individuals. Let us imagine, then, a love for 
every human being. This answers the conditions of 
the problem to this extent, that he who loves every¬ 
body will of course willingly injure nobody, that is, 
will not commit sin. And if, leaving conjecture, we 
turn again to Christ’s discourses, we find him, as it ap¬ 
pears, mentioning this very passion as the essence of 
all legislation, or as what we called above the law¬ 
making power in man. The great commandment of 
the law, he says, is to love God with all your heart and 
your neighbor as yourself , and the maxim for practice 
corresponding to this law of feeling is, 4 Do unto others 
as you would that they should do to you.’ 

Here then, it appears, is our panacea for all diseases 
of the soul; here is that passion which once conceived 
in the breast is to make laws superfluous, to redeem 
our nature, to make 4 our days bright and serene, love 
being an unerring light and joy its own security.’ We 
are to love every human being alike. The discovery, 
it cannot be concealed, seems rather an empty one. 
We will not at present inquire where are the agencies 
which are to excite in us so strange a passion : men do 
conceive strange attachments ; they learn, for example, 
to love their country, though it seems surprising that 
such an abstraction should excite so much interest. 
But is not the feeling now enjoined upon us one 


ECCE HOMO. 


166 

plainly impossible because self-contradictory? There 
exist men of opposite qualities. Love is a name we 
give to a feeling aroused in us by certain qualities, and 
hatred is the feeling aroused by qualities of the oppo¬ 
site kind. How then is it possible to love at the same 
time persons of opposite qualities? 

Obvious and forcible as this objection seems, there 
is something in us which rebels against it as soon as it 
is stated. Manifest as it may seem that we can only 
love what is lovely, and that what is hateful must, in 
the nature of things, be hated, we are yet aware that 
practically our feelings towards our fellow-creatures 
are more complex. It is not merely that almost all 
men have qualities we can love even when the hateful 
qualities preponderate, nor merely that we are con¬ 
scious how our self-interest makes many things hateful 
to us which are not hateful in themselves and would 
not be so to us if our self-love were diminished or at 
rest, but even in the extreme case, when our hatred 
seems most just and necessary, when monsters appear 
in the form of man whose crimes strike us with horror, 
even for such we sometimes detect in ourselves a feel¬ 
ing opposite to hatred. When they fall into calamity 
and death, a feeling of awe, ay, of pity, mixes with 
our rejoicing. Even in primitive times, when men’s 
feelings towards each other were for the most part 
simple and clear, when hatred was unmixed and had 
not begun to lose its 4 raven gloss’ we find these pangs 
of tenderness. When the housekeeper Euryclea was 
admitted by Ulysses into the hall where the oppressors 
of the house lay slaughtered, her first impulse, woman 
though she was — such was the fierceness of the time 


THE CHRISTIAN A LAW TO HIMSELF. 167 

— was to utter a shout of triumph. But the he?o 
stopped her and said, 1 Rejoice in silence, woman, 
and restrain thyself, and utter no shout: it is not 
right to triumph over slaughtered men/ 

If we consider these singular rolentings, the thoughts 
with which they are accompanied, and the words 
in which they most naturally express themselves, 
we shall find that it ‘is the ideal of man in each 
man which calls them forth. When we think of the 
fallen criminal or tyrant we say, 4 He too was once an 
innocent child,’ or 4 Who knows what he might have 
been had circumstances been more favorable or temp¬ 
tation less! ’ In thoughts like these we betray that 
there is a third kind of love which we may bear to 
our fellow-creatures, and which is neither that love of 
the whole race which has been called above Jacobin¬ 
ism, nor that independent love of each individual 
which appears impossible when we consider that 
different individuals exhibit opposite qualities. This 
third feeling is the love not of the race nor of the in¬ 
dividual, but of the race in the individual; it is the 
love not of all men nor yet of every man, but of the 
man in even* man. 

This ought not to be regarded as a mere Platonic 
dream. Though it finds expression most easily and 
naturally in Platonic language, it is in reality one of 
die most hackneyed and familiar of truths. There is 
a fellow-feeling, a yearning of kindness towards a 
human being as such, which is not dependent upon 
the character of the particular human being who ex¬ 
cites it, but rises before that character displays itself, 
and does not at once or altogether subside when it 


ECCE HOMO. 


168 

exhibits itself as unamiable. We save a man from 
drowning whether he is amiable or the contrary, and 
we should consider it right to do so even though we 
knew him to be a very great criminal, simply because 
he is a man. Bv examples like this we may discover 
that a love for humanity as such exists, and that it is a 
natural passion which would be universal if special 
causes did not extinguish it in special cases, but like 
all other human passions, it may be indefinitely in¬ 
creased and purified by training and by extraordinary 
agencies that may be brought to bear upon it. Now 
this was the passion upon which Christ seized, and 
treating it as the law-making power or root of 
morality in human nature, trained and developed it 
into that Christian spirit which received the new 
name of (ly&nrj. 

The objection is then removed which represents 
Christ’s rule of universal love as impracticable be¬ 
cause different men may exhibit opposite qualities, 
for it is shown that there is a kind of love which 
may be felt for unamiable persons. And though 
it must be admitted that there is an extreme degree 
of unamiability which quenches this love in us, yet 
it is conceivable that when the passion has been 
cultivated and strengthened by the means which 
Christ may employ, it may become a passion in the 
strictest sense all-embracing. What these means 
were, and what character the passion assumes in its 
full development, it is now necessary to consider. 


169 


CHAPTER XIV. 

THE ENTHUSIASM OF HUMANITY. 



HE first method of training this passion which 


Christ employed was the direct one of making 
it a point of duty to feel it. To love one’s neighboi 
as one’s self was, he said, the first and greatest law . 
And in the Sermon on the Mount he requires the 
passion to be felt in such strength as to include 
those whom we have most reason to hate — our 
enemies and those who maliciously injure 11s — and 
delivers an imperative precept, ‘ Love your enemies.’ 

It has been shown that to do this is not, as might at 
first appear, in the nature of things impossible, but 
the further question suggests itself, Can it be done to 
order? Has the verb to love really an imperative 
mood ? Certainly, to say that we can love at pleas¬ 
ure, and by a mere effort of will summon up a passion 
which does not arise of itself, is to take up a para¬ 
doxical and novel position. Yet if this position be 
really untenable, how is it possible to obey Christ’s 
command? 

The difficulty seems to admit of only one solution. 
We are not commanded to create by an effort of will 
a feeling of love in ourselves which otherwise would 
have had no existence ; the feeling must arise naturally 
or it cannot arise at all. But a number of causes 


8 


170 


ECCE HOMO. 


which aie removable may interfere to prevent the feel¬ 
ing from arising or to stifle it as it arises, and we are 
commanded to remove these hinderances. It is natural 
to man to love his kind, and Christ commands us only 
to give nature play. He does not expect us to procure 
for ourselves hearts of some new supernatural texture, 
but merely the heart of flesh for the heart of stone. 

What, then, are the causes of this paralysis of the 
heart? The experience of human life furnishes us 
readily with the answer. It constantly happens that 
one whose affections were originally not less lively 
than those of most men is thrown into the society of 
persons destitute of sympathy or tenderness. In this 
society each person is either totally indifferent to his 
neighbor or secretly endeavoring to injure or over¬ 
reach him. The new-comer is at first open-hearted 
and cordial; he presumes every one he meets to be a 
friend, and is disposed to serve and expects to be 
served by all alike. But his advances are met by some 
with cautious reserve, by others with icy coldness, by 
others with hypocritical warmth followed by treach¬ 
erous injury, by others with open hostility. The heart 
which naturally grew warm at the mere sight of a 
human being, under the operation of this new expe¬ 
rience slowly becomes paralyzed. There seats itself 
gradually in the man’s mind a presumption concerning 
every new face that it is the face of an enemy, and a 
habit of gathering himself into an attitude cf self- 
defence whenever he deals with a fellow-creature. If 
when this new disposition has grown confirmed and 
habitual, he be introduced into a society of an opposite 
kind and meet with people as friendly and kind as he 


THE ENTHUSIASM OF HUMANITY. 171 

himself was originally, he will not at first be' able to 
believe in their sincerity, and the old kindly affections 
from long disuse will be slow to rouse themselves 
within him. Now to such a person the imperative 
mood of the verb to love may fairly be used. He may 
properly be told to make an effort, to shake off the 
distrust that oppresses him, not to suffer unproved 
suspicions, causeless jealousies, to stifle by the mere 
force of prejudice and mistaken opinion the warmth 
of feeling natural to him. 

But we shall have a closer illustration if we suppose 
the cold-hearted society itself to be addressed by a 
preacher who wishes to bring them to a better mind. 
He too may fairly use the imperative mood of the verb 
to love. For he may say, 4 Your mutual coldness does 
not spring from an original want of the power of sym¬ 
pathy. If it did, admonitions would indeed be use¬ 
less. But it springs from a habit of thought which 
you have formed, a maxim which has been received 
among you, that all men are devoted to self-interest, 
that kindness is but feebleness and invites injury. If 
you will at once and by a common act throw off this 
false opinion of human nature, and adopt a new plan 
of life for yourselves and new expectations of each 
other, you will find the old affections natural to all of 
you, weakened indeed and chilled, but existing and 
ca cable of being revived by an effort.’ 

Such a preacher might go further and say, 4 If but 
a small minority are convinced by my words, yet let 
that minority for itself abandon the selfish theory, let 
it renounce the safety which that theory affords in 
dealing with selfish men, let it treat the enemy as if he 


(72 


ECCE HOMO 


were indeed the friend he ought to be, let it dare :o 
forego retaliation and even self-defence. By this means 
it will shame many into kindness; by despising self- 
interest for itself it will sometimes make it seem des¬ 
picable to others, by sincerity and persistency it will 
gradually convert the majority to a higher law of 
intercourse.’ 

The world has been always more or less like this 
cold-hearted society ; the natural kindness and fellow- 
feeling of men have always been more or less re¬ 
pressed by low-minded maxims and cynicism. But in 
the time of Christ, and in the last decrepitude of ethnic 
morality, the selfishness of human intercourse was 
much greater than the present age can easily under¬ 
stand. That system of morality, even in the times 
when it was powerful and in many respects beneficial, 
had made it almost as much a duty to hate foreigners 
as to love fellow-citizens. Plato congratulates the 
Athenians on having shown in their relations to Persia, 
beyond all the other Greeks, i a pure and heartfelt 
hatred of the foreign nature.’ * Instead of opposing, 
it had sanctioned and consecrated the savage instinct 
which leads us to hate whatever is strange or unintel¬ 
ligible, to distrust those who live on the further side of 
a river, to suppose that those whom w r e hear talking 
together in a foreign tongue must be plotting some 
mischief against ourselves. The lapse of time and 


* ovria 8rj Tot t 6 yf rrjs ndkfiof yfvvalov tcai ik.eiOcpov Pi/3atdv re icai iiyiis 
Im Kni pioofi&pfiapov did rd ri?.tKptvu>s tlvai 'EM^vff icai dpi- 

yiTs (iapPAp(i) v . aXX f nvrol "Ekk.pvfc, ov pi^ofidp^apoi oiKovpfv 80 e* 

k aO a pd v to pToo s £vt£tt]K£ t q n 6 X £ i rrjs d X X or p [ a s <p i a t m f . 
— Plato, Menexenus, p. 245. 



THE ENTHUSIASM OF HUMANITY. 173 

the fusion of races doubtless diminished this antipathy 
considerably, but at the utmost it could but be trans¬ 
formed into an icy indifference, for no cause was in 
operation to convert it into kindness. On the ether 
hand, the closeness of the bond which united fellow- 
citizens was considerably relaxed. Common interests 
and common dangers had drawn it close ; these in the 
wide security of the Roman Empire had no longer a 
place. It had depended upon an imagined blood- 
relationship ; fellow-citizens could now no longer feel 
themselves to be united by the tie of blood. Every 
town was full of resident aliens and emancipated 
slaves, persons between whom and the citizens nature 
had established no connection, and whose presence in 
the city had originally been barely tolerated from 
motives of- expediency. The selfishness of modern 
times exists in defiance of morality, in ancient times 
it was approved, sheltered, and even in part enjoined 
by morality. 

We are therefore to consider the ancient world as a 
society of men in whom natural humanity existed but 
had been, as it were, crusted or frosted over. Invet¬ 
erate feuds and narrow-minded local jealousies, arising 
out of an isolated position or differences of language 
and institutions, had created endless divisions between 
man and man. And as the special virtues of antiquity, 
patriotism and ail that it implies, had been in a man¬ 
ner caused and fostered by these very divisions, they 
were not regarded as evils but rather cherished as 
essential to morality. Selfishness, therefore, was not 
a mere abuse or corruption arising out of the infirmity 
of human nature, but a theory and almost a part of 


‘74 


ECCE HOMO. 


moral philosophy. Humanity was cramped by a mis¬ 
taken prejudice, by a perverse presumption of the in¬ 
tellect. In a case like this it was necessary and proper 
to prescribe humanity by direct authoritative precept. 
Such a precept would have been powerless to create 
the feeling, nor would it have done much to protect it 
from being overpowered by the opposite passion ; but 
the opposite passion of selfishness was at this period 
justified by authority and claimed to be on the side of 
reason and law. Precept is fairly matched against 
precept, and what the law of love and the golden rule 
did for mankind was to place for the first time the love 
of man as man distinctly in the list of virtues, to dis¬ 
sipate the exclusive prejudices of ethnic morality, and 
to give selfishness the character of sin. 

When a theory of selfishness is rife in a whole com¬ 
munity, it is a bold and hazardous step for a part of 
the community to abandon it. For in the society of 
selfish people selfishness is simply self-defence; to re¬ 
nounce it is to evacuate one’s intrenched position, to 
sui render at discretion to the enemy. If society is to 
disarm, it should do so by common consent. Christ, 
however, though he confidently expected ultimately to 
gather all mankind into his society, did not expect to 
do so soon. Accordingly he commands his followers 
not to wait for this consummation, but, in spite of the 
hazardous nature of the step, to disarm at once. They 
are sent forth 1 as sheep in the midst of wolves/ In- 
jmies they are to expect, but they are neither to shun 
nor to retaliate them. Harmless they are to be as 
doves. The discipline of suffering will wean them 
more and mo r e from self, and make the channels of 


THE ENTHUSIASM OF HUMANITY. 1 75 

humanity freer within them; and sometimes their 
patience may shame the spoiler; he may grow weary 
of rapacity which meets with no resistance, and be 
induced to envy those who can forego without reluc¬ 
tance that which he devotes every thought to acquire. 

But we shall soon be convinced that Christ could 
not design by a mere edict, however authoritative, to 
give this passion of humanity strength enough to make 
il a living and infallible principle of morality in every 
man, when we consider, first, what an ardent enthu¬ 
siasm lie demanded from his followers, and secondly, 
how frail and tender a germ this passion naturally is 
in human nature. Widely diffused indeed it is, and 
seldom entirely eradicated, but for the most part, at 
least in the ancient world, it was crushed under a 
weight of predominant passions and interests ; it had 
seldom power enough to dictate any action, but made 
itself felt in faint misgivings and relentings, which 
sometimes restrained men from extremes of cruelty. 
Like Enceladus under FEtna, it lay fettered at the 
bottom of human nature, now and then making the 
mass above it quake by an uneasy change of posture. 
To make this outraged and enslaved passion predomi¬ 
nant, to give it, instead of a veto rarely used, the 
whole power of government, to train it from a dim 
misgiving into a clear and strong passion, required 
much more than a precept. The precept had its use ; 
it could make men feel it right to be humane and de¬ 
sire to be so, but it could never inspire them with an 
enthusiasm of humanity. From what source was this 
inspiration to be derived? 

Humanity, we have already observed, is neither a 


176 


ECCE HOMO. 


love for the whole human race, nor a love for each 
individual of it, but a love for the race, or for the ideal 
of man, in each individual. In other and less pedan¬ 
tic words, he who is truly humane considers every 
human being as such interesting and important, and 
without waiting to criticise each individual specimen, 
pays in advance to all alike the tribute of good wishes 
and sympathy. Now this favorable presumption with 
legard to human beings is not a causeless preposses¬ 
sion, it is no idle superstition of the mind, nor is it a 
natural instinct. It is a feeling founded on the actual 
observation and discovery of interesting and noble 
qualities in particular human beings, and it is strong 
or weak in proportion as the person who has the feel¬ 
ing has known many or few noble and amiable human 
beings. There are men who have been so unfortunate 
as to live in the perpetual society of the mean and the 
base ; they have never, except in a few faint glimpses, 
seen anything glorious or good in human nature. 
With these the feeling of humanity has a perpetual 
struggle for existence, their minds tend by a fatal 
gravitation to the belief that the happiness or misery 
of such a paltry race is wholly unimportant; they may 
arrive finally at a fixed condition, in which it may be 
said of them without qualification, that ‘ man delights 
not them, nor woman neither.’ In this final stage 
they are men who, beyond the routine of life, should 
not be trusted, being ‘ fit for treasons, stratagems, and 
spoils.’ On the other hand, there are those whose lot 
it has been from earliest childhood to see the fair side 
of humanity, who have been surrounded with clear 
and candid countenances, in the changes of which 


THE ENTHUSIASM OF HUMANITY. 1 77 

might be traced the working of passions strong and 
simple, the impress of a firm and tender nature, wear¬ 
ing when it looked abroad the glow of sympathy, and 
when it looked within the bloom of modesty. They 
have seen, and not once or twice, a man forget him¬ 
self ; they have witnessed devotion, unselfish sorrow, 
unaffected delicacy, spontaneous charity, ingenuo is 
self-reproach ; and it may be that on seeing a human 
being surrender for another’s good not something but 
his uttermost all, they have dimly suspected in human 
nature a glory connecting it with the divine. In these 
the passion of humanity is warm and ready to become 
on occasion a burning flame ; their whole minds are 
elevated, because they are possessed with the dignity 
of that nature they share, and of the society in the 
midst of which they move. 

But it is not absolutely necessary to humanity that a 
man shall have seen many men whom he can respect. 
The most lost cynic will get a new heart by learning 
thoroughly to believe in the virtue of one man. Our 
estimate of human nature is in proportion to the best 
specimen of it we have witnessed. This then it is 
which is wanted to raise the feeling of humanity into 
an enthusiasm ; when the precept of love has been 
given, an image must be set before the eyes of those 
who are called upon to obey it, an ideal or type of 
man which may be noble and amiable enough to laise 
the whole race and make the meanest member of it 
snered with reflected glory. 

Did not Christ do this? Did the command to love 
go forth to those who had never seen a human being 
they could revere? Could his followers turn upon 

8 * 


178 


ECCE HOMO. 


him and say, How can we love a creature so de¬ 
graded, full of vile wants and contemptible passions, 
whose little life is most harmlessly spent when it is an 
empty round of eating and sleeping; a creature des¬ 
tined for the grave and for oblivion when his allotted 
term of fretfulness and folly has expired ? Of this race 
Christ himself was a member, and to this day is it not 
the best answer to all blasphemers of the species, the 
best consolation when our sense of its degradation is 
keenest, that a human brain was behind his forehead 
and a human heart beating in his breast, and that with¬ 
in the whole creation of God nothing more elevated 
or more attractive has yet been found than he ? And 
if it be answered that there was in his nature some¬ 
thing exceptional and peculiar, that humanity must 
not be measured by the stature of Christ, let us re¬ 
member that it was precisely thus that he wished it to 
be measured, delighting to call himself the Son of Man, 
delighting to call the meanest of mankind his brothers. 
If some human beings are abject and contemptible, if 
it be incredible to us that they can have any high 
dignity or destiny, do we regard them from so great a 
height as Christ? Are we likely to be more pained 
by their faults and deficiencies than he was? Is our 
standard higher than his? And yet he associated by 
preference with these meanest of the race ; no contempt 
for them did he ever express, no suspicion that the) 
might be less dear than the best and wisest to the 
common Father, no doubt that they were naturally 
capable of rising to a moral elevation like his own 
There is nothing of which a man may be prouder than 
of this; it is the most hopeful and redeeming fact in 


THE ENTHUSIASM OF HUMANITY. J 79 

history ; it is precisely what was wanting to raise the 
love of man as man to enthusiasm. An eternal glory 
has been shed upon the human race by the love Christ 
bore to it. And it was because the Edict of Universal 
Love went forth to men whose hearts were in no 
cynical mood but possessed with a spirit of devotion 
to a man, that words which at any other time, however 
grandly they might sound, would have been but words, 
penetrated so deeply, and along with the law of love 
the power of love was given. Therefore also the first 
Christians were enabled to dispense with philosophical 
phrases, and instead of saying that they loved the ideal 
of man in man could simply say and feel that they 
loved Christ in every man. 

We have here the very kernel of the Christian moral 
scheme. We have distinctly before us the end Christ 
proposed to himself, and the means he considered ade¬ 
quate to the attainment of it. His object was, instead 
of drawing up, after the example of previous legis 
lators, a list of actions prescribed, allowed, and pro¬ 
hibited, to give his disciples a universal test by which 
they might discover what it was right and what it was 
wrong to do. Now, as the difficulty of discovering 
what is right arises commonly from the prevalence of 
self-interest in our minds, and as we commonly behave 
rightly to anj^ one for whom we feel affection or 
sympathy, Ch *ist considered that he who could feel 
sympathy for all would behave rightly to all. But 
how to give to the meagre and narrow hearts of men 
such enlargement? How to make them capable of a 
universal sympathy? Christ believed it possible to 
bind men to their kind, but on one condition — that 


i8o 


ECCE HOMO. 


the)’ were first bound last to himself, lie stood forth 
as the representative of men, he identified himself 
with the cause and with the interests of all human 
beings, he was destined, as he began before long ob¬ 
scurely to intimate, to lay down his life for them. 
Few of us sympathize originally and directly with this 
devotion; few of us can perceive in human nature 
itself any merit sufficient to evoke it. But it is not so 
hard to love and venerate him who felt it. So vast a 
passion of love, a devotion so comprehensive, elevated, 
deliberate, and profound, has not elsewhere been in 
any degree approached save by some of his imitators. 
And as love provokes love, many have found it possi¬ 
ble to conceive for Christ an attachment the closeness 
of which no words can describe, a veneration so pos¬ 
sessing and absorbing the man within them, that they 
have said, ‘ I live no more, but Christ lives in me.’ 
Now such a feeling carries with it of necessity the 
feeling of love for all human beings. It matters no 
longer what quality men may exhibit; amiable or un- 
amiable, as the brothers of Christ, as belonging to his ' 
sacred and consecrated kind, as the objects of his love 
in life and death, they must be dear to all to whom he 
is dear. And those who would for a moment know 
his heart and understand his life must begin by think- 
'ng of the whole race of man, and of each member of 
the race, with awful reverence and hope. 

Love, wheresoever it appears, is in its measure a 
law-making power. 4 Love is dutiful in thought and 
deed.’ And as the lover of his country is free from 
the temptation to treason, so is he who loves Christ 
secure from the temptation to injure any human being, 


THE ENTHUSIASM OF HUMANITY. lSl 

whether it be himself or another. He is indeed much 
more than this. He is bound and he is eager to benefit 
and bless to the utmost of his power all that bear his 
Master's nature, and that not merely with the good 
gifts of the earth, but with whatever cherishes and 
trains best the Christ within them. But for the present 
we are concerned merely with the power of this passion 
to lift the man out of sin. The injuries he committed 
lightly when he regarded his fellow-creatures simply 
as animals who added to the fierceness of the brute 
an ingenuity and forethought that made them doubly 
noxious, become horrible sacrilege when he sees in 
them no longer the animal but the Christ. And that 
other class of crimes which belongs more especially 
to ages of civilization, and arises out of a cynical con¬ 
tempt for the species, is rendered equally impossible 
to the man who hears with reverence the announce¬ 
ment, 4 The good deeds you did to the least of these 
my brethren you did to me/ 

There are two objections which may suggest them¬ 
selves at this point, the one to intellectual, the other to 
practical men. The intellectual man may sa}q 4 To 
discover what it is right to do in any given case is not 
the province of any feeling or passion however sublime, 
but requires the application of the same intellectual 
power which solves mathematical problems. The 
common acts of life may no doubt be performed cor¬ 
rectly by unintellectual people, but this is because 
these constantly recurring problems have been solved 
long ago by clever people, and the vulgar are now in 
possession of the results. Whenever a new combina¬ 
tion occurs it is a matter for casuists ; the best intentions 


ECCE HOMO. 


182 

will avail little; there is doubtless a great difference 
between a good man and a bad one ; the one will do 
what is right when he knows it, and the other will 
not; but in respect for the power of ascertaining what 
it is right to do, supposing their knowledge of casuistry 
to be equal, they are on a par. Goodness, or the 
passion of humanity, or Christian love, may be a 
motive inducing men to keep the law, but it has no 
right to be called the law-making power. And what 
has Christianity added to our theoretic knowledge 
of morality? It may have made men practically 
more moral, but has it added anything to Aristotle’s 
Ethics?’ 

Certainly Christianity has no ambition to invade the 
provinces of the moralist or the casuist. But the diffi¬ 
culties which beset the discovery of the right moral 
course are of two kinds. There are the difficulties 
which arise from the blinding and confusing effect of 
selfish passions, and which obscure from the view the 
end which should be aimed at in action ; when these 
have been overcome there arises a new set of difficul¬ 
ties concerning the means by which the end should be 
attained. In dealing with your neighbor the first thing 
to be understood is that his interest is to be considered 
as well as your own ; but when this has been settled, 
it remains to be considered what his interest is. The 
latter class of difficulties requires to be dealt with by 
the intellectual or calculating faculty. The formei 
class can only be dealt with by the moral force of 
sympathy. Now it is true that the right action will 
not be performed without the operation of both these 
agencies But the moral agency is the dominant one 


THE ENTHUSIASM OF HUMANITY. 1 83 

tlnougliout; it is that without which the very concep¬ 
tion of law is impossible; it overcomes those difficul¬ 
ties which in the vast majority of practical cases are 
the most serious. The calculating casuistical faculty 
is, as it were, in its employ, and it is no more im¬ 
proper to call it the law-making power, although it 
does not ultimately decide what action is to be per¬ 
formed, than to say that a house was built by one who 
did not with his own hands lay the bricks and spread 
the mortar. 

The objection which practical men take is a very 
important one, as the criticisms of such men always 
are, being founded commonly upon large observation 
and not perverted by theory. They say that the love 
of Christ does not in practice produce the nobleness 
and largeness of character which has been represented 
as its proper and natural result; that instead of inspir* 
ing those who feel it with reverence and hope for their 
kind, it makes them exceedingly narrow in their sym¬ 
pathies, disposed to deny and explain away even the 
most manifest virtues displayed by men, and to de¬ 
spair of the future destiny of the great majority of 
their fellow-creatures; that instead of binding them to 
their kind, it divides them from it by a gulf which 
they themselves proclaim to be impassable and eter¬ 
nal, and unites them only in a gloomy conspiracy of 
misanthropy with each other; that it is indeed a law- 
making power, but that the laws it makes are little- 
minded and vexatious prohibitions of things innocent, 
demoralizing restraints upon the freedom of joy and 
the healthy instincts of nature ; that it favors hypocri¬ 
sy, moroseness, and sometimes lunacy; that the only 


184 


ECCE IIOMO. 


vice it has power to check is thoughtlessness, and its 
only beneficial effect is that of forcing into activity, 
though not always into healthy activity, the faculty' of 
serious reflection. 

This may be a just picture of a large class of reli¬ 
gious men, but it is impossible in the nature of things 
that such effects should be produced by a pure per¬ 
sonal devotion to Christ. We are to remember that 
nothing has been subjected to such multiform ana 
grotesque perversion as Christ'anity. Certainly the di 
rect love of Christ, as it was felt by his first followers, 
is a rare thing among modern Christians. His charac¬ 
ter has been so much obscured by scholasticism, as to 
have lost in a great measure its attractive power. 
The prevalent feeling towards him now among re¬ 
ligious men is an awful fear of his supernatural great¬ 
ness, and a disposition to obey his commands arising 
partly from dread of future punishment and hope of 
reward, and partly from a nobler feeling of loyalty, 
which, however, is inspired rather by his office than 
his person. Beyond this we may discern in them an 
uneasy conviction that he requires a more personal 
devotion, which leads to spasmodic efforts to kindle 
the feeling by means of violent raptures of panegyric 
and by repeating over and getting by rote the ardent 
expressions of those who really had it. That is want¬ 
ing for the most part which Christ held to be all in 
all, spontaneous warmth, free and generous devotion. 
That the fruits of a Christianity so hollow should be 
poor and sickly is not surprising. 

But that Christ’s method, when rightly applied, is 
really of mighty force may be shown by an argument 


THE ENTHUSIASM OF HUMANITY. 1S5 

which the severest censor of Christians will hardly 
refuse to admit. Compare the ancient with the mod¬ 
ern world ; 4 Look on this picture and on that.’ One 
broad distinction in the characters of men forces itself 
into prominence. Among all the men of the ancient 
heathen world there were scarcely one or two to whom 
we might venture to apply the epithet 4 holy/ In 
other words, there were not more than one or two, if 
any, who besides being virtuous in their actions were 
possessed with an unaffected enthusiasm of goodness, 
and besides abstaining from vice regarded even a 
vicious thought with horror. Probably no one will 
deny that in Christian countries this higher-toned good¬ 
ness, which we call holiness, has existed. Few will 
maintain that it has been exceedingly rare. Perhaps 
the truth is, that there has scarcely been a town in 
any Christian country since the time of Christ where 
a century has passed without exhibiting a character 
of such elevation that his mere presence has shamed 
the bad and made the good better, and has been felt 
at times like the presence of God Himself. And if 
tiiis be so, has Christ failed? or can Christianity die? 


CHAPTER XV. 


THE LOR D’S SUPPER. 

T HAT Christ had but a slight esteem for rites 
and ceremonies may be argued negatively from 
his establishing so few, and positively from the con¬ 
tempt he poured on the traditional formalities prized 
so highly by the Scribes and Pharisees. But he well 
understood their use, and we have already observed 
with what rigorous firmness he insisted on his follow¬ 
ers submitting to the initiatory rite of baptism. The 
kingdom he was founding was to be everywhere im- 
perium in imperio; its members were to be at the 
same time members of secular states and national 
bodies. It was therefore a matter of extreme impor¬ 
tance to preserve the distinctness of the Christian 
society and to prevent its members from being drawn 
apart from each other by the distractions of worldly 
claims and engagements. For this purpose certain 
saci'amenta or solemn observances renewing and re¬ 
minding them of their union were most desirable, and 
Christ ordained two, the one expressing the distinct¬ 
ness of the Church from the world, and the other the 
unity of the Church within itself. Of the former, 
Baptism, mention was made when we considered 
Christ’s Call, concerning the latter, the Common Sup¬ 
per or (Tvaaiuov of Christians, it is convenient to say 
something now. 


THE LORD’S SUPPER. 1 87 

A common meal is the most natural and universal 
way of expressing, maintaining, and as it were ratify¬ 
ing relations of friendship. The spirit of antiquity 
regarded the meals of human beings as having the 
nature of sacred rites (sacra mensas). If therefore it 
sounds degrading to compare the Christian Commun¬ 
ion to a club-dinner, this is not owing to any essential 
difference between the two things, but to the fact that 
the moderns connect less dignified associations with 
meals than the ancients did, and that most clubs have 
a far less serious object than the Christian Society. 
The Christian Communion is a club-dinner: but the 
club is the New Jerusalem ; God and Christ are mem¬ 
bers of it; death makes no vacancy in its lists, but at 
its banquet-table the perfected spirits of just men, with 
an innumerable company of angels, sit down beside 
those who have not yet surrendered their bodies to the 
grave. 

Goethe thought that Protestant Christians have too 
few sacraments, and this opinion is not refuted by the 
fact that Christ himself only instituted two. We are 
to suppose, however, that these two are the most 
essential, and indeed without them we can scarcely 
imagine the Church maintaining its distinct existence. 
Without a solemn form of entrance, and without occa¬ 
sional solemn meetings, Christians would forget that 
they were Christians. But in these meetings it was 
obviously desiiable, if it were possible, that not only 
the fact of the union of Christians, but also the nature 
and manner of their union, should be symbolically 
expressed. We have now considered at some length 
the nature and conditions of the Christian Society, 


ECCE HOMO. 


188 

without referring to or producing in evidence the 
Lord’s Supper. If therefore the form of the Lord’s 
Supper expresses symbolically such a union as we 
have described, we shall derive from this fact a con¬ 
firmation of the results at which we had independently 
arrived. 

Of those results some do not require confirmation, 
being in themselves obvious and disputed by none. It 
has never been questioned that the doctrine of the 
brotherhood of mankind and of the duty of universal 
benevolence and charity is a main feature of Christian¬ 
ity. This doctrine, then, is very plainly symbolized 
in the Lord’s Supper. As a meeting or communion 
it is clearly designed to express a certain fellowship 
between those who share it; by admitting all Chris¬ 
tians without distinction on equal terms, it expresses 
the universal character of the society. The extreme 
simplicity of the ceremony makes its symbolical char¬ 
acter more impressive, and averts, as far as that is 
possible, the danger which all venerated symbols incur 
of being valued for their own sake and confounded 
with the thing symbolized. The meal consisted of 
bread and wine, the simplest and in those countries 
most universal elements of food ; and when men of 
different nations or degrees sat or knelt together and 
received, as from the hand of God, this simple repast, 
they were reminded in the most forcible manner of 
their common human wants, and their common char¬ 
acter of pensioners on the bounty of the Universal 
Father. 

But Christ added something to the ceremony. He 
bade his followers consider the bread they ate as his 


THE LORD’S SUPPER. 


l8q 

body, and the wine they drank as his blood. And in 
a discourse lecorded by St. John, which we may quote 
without distrust, as it is so manifestly confirmed by 
the accounts given by the other Evangelists of the 
institution of the Supper, he says, ‘ Except ye eat the 
flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man, ye have 
no life in you.’ What Christ meant by life is not now 
difficult to discover. It is that healthy condition of 
the mind which issues of necessity in right action. 
This health of the soul we know Christ regarded as 
consisting in a certain enthusiasm of love for human 
beings as such. This enthusiasm then, we are now 
informed, will n^r spring up in us spontaneously nor 
by any efforts we may make to kindle it in ourselves, 
nor is the message of Christianity fully delivered when 
love to the human race is declared to be a duty; hu¬ 
man beings will not unite merely because they are told 
to do so, nor will the anarchic passions submit to a 
mere reproof. Men cannot learn to love each other, 
says Christ, but ‘ by eating his flesh and drinking his 
blood.’ 

The Lord’s Supper, then, confirms by its symbolism 
the view of Christian morality which was taken in the 
last chapter. It w r as there asserted that Christ did not 
regard it as possible to unite men to each other but by 
first uniting them to himself. And in the Lord’s Sup¬ 
per, in which the union of Christians is symbolized, it 
is represented as depending not merely on the natural 
passion of humanity implanted in their breasts, nor 
merely on the command of Christ calling that passion 
into activity, but upon a certain intimate personal con¬ 
tact between Christ and his followers. The union of 


190 


ECCE HOMO. 


mankind, but a union begun and subsisting only in 
Christ, is what the Lord’s Supper sacramentally 
expresses. 

As to the metaphor itself, if it seems at first violent 
and unnatural, we are to observe that on the subject 
of the personal devotion required by Christ from his 
followers his language was often of this vehement 
kind, and that his first followers in describing their 
relation to him in like manner overleap the bounds of 
ordinary figurative language. Christ, in a passage to 
which allusion has already been made, demanded of 
his followers that they should hate their father and 
mother for his sake, and St. Paul in many passages 
declares that Christ is his life and his very self. It is 
precisely this intense personal devotion, this habitual 
feeding on the character of Christ, so that the essential 
nature of the Master seems to pass into and become 
the essential nature of the servant — loyalty carried to 
the point of self-annihilation — that is expressed by 
the words 4 eating the flesh and drinking the blood of 
Christ.’ 

Much remains to be said about the details of Chris* 
tian morality, but the reader should already be in a 
condition to understand and judge of its scope. And 
let us pause once more to consider that which remains 
throughout a subject of ever-recurring astonishment, 
the unbounded personal pretensions which Christ 
advances. It is common in human history to meet 
with those who claim some superiority over their 
fellows Men assert a preeminence over their fellow 
citizens or fellow-countrymen and become rulers of 


THE LORD’S SUPPER. 


I 9 I 

those who at first were their equals, hut they dream 
of nothing greater than some partial control over the 
actions of others for the short space of a lifetime. Few 
indeed are those to whom it is given to influence 
future ages. Yet some men have appeared who have 
been ‘ as levers to uplift the earth and roll it in another 
course.’ Homer by creating literature, Socrates by 
creating science, Csesar by carrying civilization inland 
from tire shores of the Mediterranean, Newton by 
starting science upon a career of steady progress, may 
be said to have attained this eminence. But these 
men gave a single impact like that which is conceived 
to have first set the planets in motion, Christ claims 
to be a perpetual attractive power like the sun which 
determines their orbit. They contributed to men 
some discovery and passed away; Christ’s discovery 
is himself. To humanity struggling with its passions 
and its destiny he says, Cling to me, cling ever closer 
to me. If we believe St. John, he represented himself 
as the Light of the World, as the Shepherd of the 
Souls of men, as the Way to immortality, as the Vine 
or Life-Tree of Humanity. And if we refuse to 
believe that he used those words, we cannot deny, 
without rejecting all the evidence before us, that he 
used words which have substantially the same mean¬ 
ing. We cannot deny that he commanded men to 
leave everything and attach themselves to him ; that 
he declared himself king, master, and judge of men; 
that he promised to give rest to all the weaiy and 
heavy-laden; that he instructed his followers to 
hope for life from feeding on his body and blood. 


192 


ECCE HOMO. 


But it is doubly surprising to observe that these enor¬ 
mous pretensions were advanced by one whose special 
peculiarity 7 , not only among his contemporaries but 
among the remarkable men that have appeared before 
and since, was an almost feminine tenderness and 
humanity. This characteristic was remarked, as we 
have seen, by the Baptist, and Christ himself was 
fully conscious of it. Yet so clear to him was his 
own dignity and infinite importance to the human 
race as an objective fact with which his own opinion 
of himself had nothing to do, that in the same breath 
in which he asserts it in the most unmeasured lan¬ 
guage he alludes, apparently with entire unconscious¬ 
ness, to his humility. ‘ Take my yoke upon you and 
learn of me, for I am meek and lowly of heartl 
And again, when speaking to his followers of the 
arrogance of the Pharisees, he says, ‘ They love to be 
called Rabbi; but be not you called Rabbi, for one is 
your master , even Christ .’ 

Who is the humble man ? It is he who resists with 
special watchfulness and success the temptations 
which the conditions of his life may offer to exag¬ 
gerate his own importance. He, for example, is 
humble who, born into a high station, remembers that 
those who are placed lower in society are also men 
and may have more intrinsic merit and dignity than 
himself. Christ could not show his humility in this 
way, for he was poor and obscure. But there are 
peculiar temptations which assail the thinker. He is 
in danger of being intoxicated by the influence which 
he gains over others, he feels himself elevated by the 


THE LORD’S SUPPER. 393 

greatness of the thoughts with which his mind habit¬ 
ually deals and which from time to time it originates. 
If besides intellectual gifts the thinker possess acute 
sensibility, strong moral intuitions, heroic powers of 
indignation and pity, his temptation is to suppose that 
he is made of finer clay than other men, and that he 
has a natural title to preeminence and sovereignty over 
them. Such is the temptation of moral reformers 
such as Christ, and if Christ was humble he resisted 
this temptation with exceptional success. If he judged 
himself correctly, and if the Baptist described him 
well when he compared him to a lamb, and, we may 
add, if his biographers have delineated his character 
faithfully, Christ was one naturally contented with 
obscurity, wanting the restless desire for distinction 
and eminence which is common in great men, hating 
to put forward personal claims, disliking competition 
and t disputes who should be greatest,’ finding some¬ 
thing bombastic in the titles of royalty, fond of what 
is simple and homely, of children, of poor people, 
occupying himself so much with the concerns of 
others, with the relief of sickness and want, that the 
temptation to exaggerate the importance of his own 
thoughts and plans was not likely to master him ; 
lastly, entertaining for the human race a feeling so 
singularly fraternal that he was likely to reject as a 
sort of treason the impulse to set himself in any 
manner above them. Christ, it appears, was this 
humble man. When we have fully pondered the fact, 
we may be in a condition to estimate the force of the 
evidence, which, submitted to his mind, could induce 
9 


r 94 


ECCE HOMO. 


him, in direct opposition to all his tastes and instincts, 
to lay claim, persistently, with the calmness of entire 
conviction, in opposition to the whole religious world, 
in spite of the offence which his own followers con¬ 
ceived, to a dominion more transcendent, more univer¬ 
sal, more complete, than the most delirious votary of 
glory ever aspired to in his dreams. 



-95 


CHAPTER XVI. 

POSITIVE MORALITY. 

O UR investigation into the character of the law 
under which the members of the Christian Com' 
monwealth are called to live has led us to the dis¬ 
covery that in the strict sense of the word no such law 
exists, it being characteristic of this commonwealth 
that every member of it is a lawgiver to himself. 
Every Christian, we learn, has a divine inspiration 
which dictates to him in all circumstances the right 
course of action, which inspiration is the passion of 
humanity raised to a high energy by contemplation of 
Christ’s character, and by the society of those in whom 
the same enthusiasm exists. We cease, therefore, 
henceforth to speak of a Christian law, and endeavor 
instead to describe in its large outlines the Christian 
character; that is to say, the new views, feelings, and 
habits produced in the Christian by his guiding en¬ 
thusiasm. 

The tendency and operation of this enthusiasm will 
be most clearly apprehended if we consider the way 
in which it led those who felt it to regard the current 
morality of their time and country, in other words, 
(lie T ewish law. In this law they had been bred ; it 
was their rule of life up to the time when they awoke 
to a new life. How, then, did they regard this system 
pfler their regeneration? 


196 


ECCE HOMO. 


In the first place they regarded it critically, as some* 
thing of which they were independent and with which 
they could dispense. They had in their own breasts 
an inexhaustible spring of morality; of written and 
formulated morality they had henceforth no need. 
Feeling a sure foundation under their feet, they gath¬ 
ered courage for the first time to examine and criticise 
what before they had felt it their wisdom to receive 
without criticism. As Jews their piety had consisted 
in a certain timid caution, a wary walking in the old 
paths, and when they became Christians, it is remark¬ 
able that they gave to those who continued to be what 
they had originally been the title of ‘ the cautious men.’ 

In periods which are wanting in inspiration piety 
always assumes this character of caution. It degener¬ 
ates from a free and joyful devotion to a melancholy 
and anxious slavery. The first work of the Divine 
Spirit was a work of encouragement, and the humblest 
man was found the most courageous of all. He scru¬ 
tinized fearlessly the mass of traditions which then 
went by the name of the Law, and unhesitatingly pro 
nounced a great part of them wanting in authority. 
Some of these time-honored usages he stigmatized as 
immoral and mischievous, others, which were in them¬ 
selves indifferent, he treated with contemptuous neg¬ 
lect. We may imagine that by this conduct he gave 
grievous offence to some honest, ‘ cautious,’ conserva¬ 
tive spirits. Doubtless — thus they may have expos¬ 
tulated— the washing of cups and. pots is in itself 
unimportant, but wise men, our ancestors, have pro¬ 
scribed the usage ; by such symbolism we may learn 
the lesson and form the habit of purity. These men 


POSITIVE MORALITY. 


197 


Christ perhaps regarded as Milton regarded the versi¬ 
fier who did not know whether his lines were of the 
right length till he had counted the syllables. As the 
poet consulted on such questions only the soul of 
rhythm within him, so were all mysteries of purity 
made clear to Christ by the Spirit of purity which he 
iiad received from above. It was not, indeed, in his 
nature to despise anything which might be useful to 
the ignorant and the weak, however unnecessary for 
himself. As he stooped to receive baptism from John, 
so he would, no doubt, have sanctioned these usages 
by his own observance if he had seen any good in 
them at all. But he seems to have considered that the 
time for these methods w r as gone by; and as all such 
contrivances begin to be mischievous the moment they 
cease to be beneficial, he condemned them as fettering 
the freedom of that inspiration which was for the 
future to take the place of law. 

Of the Scriptures of the Old Testament he always 
spoke with the utmost reverence, and he seems never 
to have called in question the Jewish view of them as 
infallible oracles of God. Some parts of them, par¬ 
ticularly the book of Deuteronomy, seem to have been 
often present to his thoughts. Yet even the Old Tes¬ 
tament he regarded in a sense critically, and he intro¬ 
duced canons of interpretation which must have 
astonished by their boldness the religious men of the 
day. For he regarded the laws of Moses, though 
divine, as capable of becoming obsolete and also as 
incomplete. On the question of divorce he declared 
the Mosaic arrangement to have been well suited for 
the 4 hard-heartedness * of a semi-barbarous age, but 


ECCE HOMO. 


198 

to be no longer justifiable in the advanced condition 
of morals. So too in the matter of oaths, the permis¬ 
sion of private revenge, and other points in which the 
Mosaic legislation had necessarily something of a bar¬ 
baric character, he unhesitatingly repealed the acts of 
the lawgiver and introduced new provisions. 

It is easy to imagine the alarm which such freedom 
of interpretation must have excited in the 4 cautious/ 
They would declare it destructive of the authority of 
the Scriptures. Were not the Scriptures given, they 
would say, to save man from his own reason ? Does 
not their priceless value consist in this, that for all 
conceivable circumstances they furnish a ride which 
simple men may follow with simple obedience? But 
if these divine rules can in any case become obsolete, 
if human affairs can change so far that the Scriptures 
can cease to be a guide to our feet, if the words of the 
Eternal can be subject to the accidents of time and 
mutability, what further use can there be in the Scrip¬ 
tures, and how henceforth shall our steps be guided? 

It was the inspiration, the law-making power, that 
gave Christ and his disciples courage to shake them¬ 
selves free from the fetters even of a divine law. 
Their position was a new and delicate one, and noth¬ 
ing but such an inspiration could have enabled them to 
maintain it. To pronounce the old law entirely true 
or entirely false would have been easy, but to cor sider 
it as true and divine yet no longer true for them, no 
longer their authoritative guide, must have seemed, 
and must seem even to us, at first sight unnatural and 
paradoxical. It may be illustrated, however, by what 
every one has observed to happen in the process of 


POSITIVE MORALITY. 


I99 


learning any art. For the beginner rigid rules are 
prescribed, which it will be well for him for a time to 
follow punctiliously and blindly. He may believe 
that under these rules a principle is concealed, that a 
reason could be given why they should be followed, 
but it is well for a time that the principle should re¬ 
main concealed and that the rules should be followed 
simply because they are prescribed. At any rate, so 
long as he actually has not discovered the principle, 
he must abide strictly by the rules, and it would be 
foolish to abandon them in order to go in search of it. 
But there comes a time when the discovery is made, a 
golden moment of silent expansion and enlargement. 
Then the reason of all the discipline to which he has 
submitted becomes clear to him, the principle reveals 
itself and makes the confused and ill-apprehended 
multitude of details in a moment harmonious and 
luminous. But the principle at the same moment that 
it explains the rules supersedes them. They may be 
not less true than before, they may be seen to be true 
far more clearly than before. But they are obsolete ; 
their use is gone ; they can for the future tell only that 
which is already well known, which can never again 
be forgotten or misunderstood. If the student refers 
to them at a later time it is with a feeling of wonder 
that they should ever have delayed his attention for a 
moment, and probably in the rude and peremptory 
particularity of their form he may discover that which, 
though well enough adapted for the beginner under 
certain circumstances, is yet in itself not true and is 
calculated under other circumstances to mislead. 

It was in this manner that Christ found the Mosaic 


200 


ECCE HOMO. 


law at once divine and in part obsolete. But not only 
did he find it in part obsolete, he found it throughout 
utterly meagre and imperfect. And this was inevita¬ 
ble. Between the rude clans that had listened to 
Moses in the Arabian desert and the Jews who in the 
reign of Tiberius visited the temple courts there was 
a great gulf. The 4 hard-heartedness : of die primitive 
nation had given way under the gradual influence of 
law and peace and trade and literature. Laws which 
in the earlier time the best men had probably found it 
hard to keep could now serve only as a curb upon the 
worst. The disciples of Moses were subject to law¬ 
less passions which they could not control, and the 
fiercest ebullitions of which seemed to them venial, 
misfortunes rather than crimes. Self-restraint of any 
kind was to them a new and hard lesson. They lis¬ 
tened with awe to the inspired teacher who taught them 
not to covet their neighbor’s wife or property; and 
when they were commanded not to commit murder, 
they wondered doubtless by what art, by what con¬ 
trivance, it might be possible to put a bridle on the 
thing called a?iger — 4 anger which far sweeter than 
trickling drops of honey rises in the bosom of a man 
like smoke.’ But how much was all this changed! 
If one like Paul had gone to a Christian teacher after 
the new enthusiasm of humanity had been excited in 
him, and asked for instruction in morality, would it 
have satisfied him to be told that he must abstain from 
committing murder and robbery? These laws, to be 
sure, were not obsolete, but the better class of men 
had been raised to an elevation of goodness at which 
they were absolutely unassailable by temptations to 


POSITIVE MORALITY. 


201 


commit them Their moral sense required a different 
training, far more advanced instruction. It is true 
that in the later books of the Old Testament there 
might be found a morality considerably more ad¬ 
vanced, but through the life and example of Christ the 
humblest of his followers was advanced a long stage 
beyond even this. No one who had felt, however 
feebly, the Christian enthusiasm could fail to find even 
in Deuteronomy and Isaiah something narrow, anti¬ 
quated, and insufficient for his needs. 

Now in what consisted precisely the addition made 
by Christ to morality ? 

It has been already shown that Christ raised the 
feeling of humanity from being a feeble restraining 
power to be an inspiring passion. The Christian 
moral reformation may indeed be summed up in this 

— humanity changed from a restraint to a motive. 
We shall be prepared therefore to find that while ear¬ 
lier moralities had dealt chiefly in prohibitions, Chris¬ 
tianity deals in positive commands. And precisely 
this is the case, precisely this difference made the Old 
Testament seem antiquated to the first Christians. 
They had passed from a region of passive into a region 
of active morality. The old legal formula began 4 thou 
shalt not] the new begins with 4 thou shaft? The 
young man who had kept the whole law — that is, 
who had refrained from a number of actions— is 
commanded to do something, to sell his goods and 
feed the poor. Condemnation passed under the Mo¬ 
saic law upon him who had sinned, who had done 
something forbidden — the soul that sinneth shall die ; 

— Christ’s condemnation is pronounced upon those 

9 * 



202 


ECCE HOMO. 


who had not done good. 4 1 was an hungered and ye 
gave me no meat.’ The sinner whom Christ habitu¬ 
ally denounces is he who has done nothing. This 
character comes repeatedly forward in his parables. 
It is the priest and Levite who passed by on the oilier 
side It is Dives, of whom no ill is recorded except 
that a beggar lay at his gate full of sores and yet no 
man gave unto him. It is the servant who hid in a 
napkin the talent committed to him. It is the un¬ 
profitable seiwant, who has only done what it was his 
duty to do. 

Putting together these parables delivered at different 
times and to different audiences, yet all teaching the 
same doctrine, and adding to them the positive ex¬ 
hortations to almsgiving, to free and lavish charity, 
we see that Christ’s conception of practical goodness 
answers to his ideal of a right state of mind. We . 
observed that he considered the healthy condition of 
character to be an enthusiastic or inspired condition ; 
we now find that he prescribes just such conduct as 
would be prompted by such enthusiastic feelings. 
And this consistency or unity of his teaching will 
appear still more plainly when we consider what the 
tenor of his own life was. It may sometimes strike 
us that the time which he devoted to acts of benefi¬ 
cence and the relief of ordinary physical evils might 
have been given to works more permanently bene¬ 
ficial to the race. Of his two great gifts, the 
power over nature and the high moral wisdom and 
ascendency over men, the former might be the more 
astonishing, but it is the latter which gives him his 
everlasting dominion. He might have left to all sub- 


POSITIVE MORALITY. 


203 


sequent ages more instruction if he had bestowed less 
time upon diminishing slightly the mass of evil around 
him, and lengthening by a span the short lives of the 
generation in the midst of which he lived. The whole 
amount of good done by such works of charity could 
not be great, compared with Christ’s powers of doing 
good ; and if they were intended, as is often supposed, 
merely as attestations of his divine mission, a few acts 
of the kind would have served this purpose as well as 
many. Yet we may see that they were in fact the 
great work of his life; his biography may be summed 
up in the words, ‘ he went about doing good; ’ his 
wise words were secondary to his beneficial deeds; 
the latter were not introductory to the former, but the 
former grew occasionally, and, as it were, accidentally 
out of the latter. The explanation of this is that 
Christ merely reduced to practice his own principle. 
His morality required that the welfare and happiness 
of others should not merely be remembered as a re¬ 
straint upon action, but should be made the principal 
motive of action, and what he preached in words 
he preached still more impressively and zealously in 
deeds. He set the first and greatest example of a life 
wholly governed and guided by the passion of human¬ 
ity. The very scheme and plan of his life differed 
from that of other men. He had no personal pros¬ 
pects, no fortune to push, no ambitions. A good man 
before had been understood to be one who in the pur¬ 
suit of his own personal happiness is careful to con¬ 
sider also the happiness of those around him, declines 
all prosperity gained at their expense, employs his 
leisure in relieving some of their wants, and who, 


204 


ECCE HOMO. 


lastly, in some extreme need or danger of those con¬ 
nected with him, his relations or his country, consents 
to sacrifice his own life or welfare to theirs. In this 
scheme of life humanity in its rudimentary forms of 
family feeling or patriotism enters as a restraining or 
regulating principle ; only in the extreme case does it 
become the mainspring of action. What with other 
yood men was the extreme case, with Christ was the 
rule. In many countries and at many different times 
the lives of heroes had been offered up on the altar of 
filial or parental or patriotic love. A great impulse 
had overmastered them; personal interests, the love 
of life and of the pleasures of life, had yielded to a 
higher motive ; the names of those who had made the 
great oblation had been held in honor by succeeding 
ages, the place where it was made pointed out, the 
circumstances of it proudly recounted. Such a sacri* 
fice, the crowning act of human goodness when it rises 
above itself, was made by Christ, not in some moment 
of elevation, not in some extreme emergency, but ha¬ 
bitually ; this is meant when it is said, he went about 
doing good ; nor was the sacrifice made for relative or 
friend or country, but for all everywhere who bear the 
name of man. 

Those who stood by watching his career felt that his 
teaching, but probably still more his deeds, were cre¬ 
ating a revolution in morality and were setting to all 
previous legislations, Mosaic or Gentile, that seal which 
is at once ratification and abolition. While they 
watched, they felt the rules and maxims by which 
they had hitherto lived die into a higher and larger 
life. They felt the freedom which is gained by de* 


POSITIVE MORALITY. 


stroying selfishness instead of restraining it, by crucify¬ 
ing the flesh instead of circumcising it. In this new 
rule they perceived all old rules to be included, but so 
included as to seem insignificant, axioms of moral sci¬ 
ence, beggarly elements. It no longer seemed to them 
necessary to prohibit in detail and with laborious enu¬ 
meration the different acts by which a man may injuie 
his neighbor. Now that they had at heart as the first 
of interests the happiness of all with whom they might 
be brought in contact, they no longer required a law, 
for they had acquired a quick and sensitive instinct, 
which restrained them from doing harm. But while 
the new morality incorporated into itself the old, how 
much ampler was its compass! A new continent in 
the moral globe was discovered. Positive morality 
took its place by the side of Negative. To the duty 
of not doing harm, which may be called justice, was 
added the duty of doing good, which may properly re 
cei\e the distinctively Christian name of Charity. 

And this is the meaning of that prediction which 
certain shepherds reported to have come to them in a 
mystic song heard under the open sky of night (‘ car¬ 
mine perfidiae quod post nulla arguet aetas’) proclaim¬ 
ing the commencement of an era of ‘good will to menl 


206 


CHAPTER XVII. 

TUB LAW OF PHILANTHROPY. 

T HUS there rises before us the image of a com* 
monwealth in which a universal enthusiasm not 
only takes the place of law, but by converting into a 
motive what was before but a passive restraint, en¬ 
larges the compass of morality and calls into existence 
a number of positive obligations which under the do¬ 
minion of law had not been acknowledged. It is a 
commonwealth sustained and governed by the desire 
existing in the mind of each of its members to do as 
much good as possible to every other member. 

Doubtless, a commonwealth fully answering this de¬ 
scription has never existed on the earth, nor can exist. 
It is an ideal. True that Christ always spoke of the 
kingdom of God as an actual and present common¬ 
wealth into which men were actually introduced by 
baptism. Nevertheless he fully acknowledged its ideal 
character, and therefore spoke of it as at the same time 
future and still waiting to be realized. Those who 
were already members of God’s kingdom were not¬ 
withstanding instructed to pray that that kingdom 
might come. And if we look at the facts around us 
we shall discover that the kingdom of God has always 
been in this manner at once present and future, at 
once realized and waiting to be realized. In othei 


THE LAW OF PHILANTHROPY. 


207 


words, it lias always fallen far short of its ideal, and 
yet it has never ceased in some degree to resemble that 
ideal. It has never ceased to abide by the positive or 
active scheme of morality, and to occupy itself more or 
less zealously with works of beneficence and charity. 
We may go further, and sav-that the Christian view 
of morality' has become universal, so that now no man 
is called or considered good, whether he bear the 
Christian name or not, who does not in some form or 
other exhibit an active love for his kind and go out of 
his way to do good. 

The enthusiasm of humanity in Christians is not 
only their supreme but their only law. It has been 
remarked that Christ’s plan was to kindle in the hearts 
of his followers a feeling which should dictate to them 
the right course of action in all circumstances. It fol¬ 
lows that when we have considered the nature of this 
feeling we have exhausted the subject of Christian 
morality. If Christ delivered any other more special 
commands besides the command to love, they must be 
either deducible from it, if it be the law-making power 
which he pronounced it to be, or if they do not agree 
with its dictates — if those who have the genuine en¬ 
thusiasm in them find that the literal obedience to 
Christ’s special commands is in any instance irrecon¬ 
cilable with obedience to his universal command — 
they must bear in mind the boldness with which he 
himself treated the Mosaic law while acknowledging 
it to be divine. They must remember that principles 
last forever, but special rules pass away with the 
things and conditions to which they refer. As Christ 
relaxed the sabbatical obligation by referring to the 


ECCE HOMO. 


2oS 

object ot the ordinance — the Sabbath was made for 
man — so should his disciples boldly and reverently 
interpret his precepts by the light of the principle 
which governed them, the principle of humanity, and 
obey as freemen not as slaves. 

But to us considering what are likely to be the 
characteristics, the modes of life and action, of a per¬ 
son in whom the Enthusiasm of Humanity has been 
kindled, these special commands of Christ are likely 
to afford the very information w r e seek. A principle 
is best seen in its practical applications, a rule in its 
examples. It may be said, then, that besides the great 
and one law of love Christ delivered three special 
injunctions. 

First, he enjoined his followers to apply themselves 
to relieving the physical needs and distresses of their 
fellow-creatures. Next, he commanded them to add 
new members to the Christian Church, and especially 
to seek the amendment of the neglected, outcast, and 
depraved part of society. Thirdly, he enjoined them 
to forgive all personal injuries. These three injunc¬ 
tions we will proceed to consider in order. 

The command to relieve physical distress is many 
times repeated. Christians are to give alms ; in some 
cases they were commanded to give all their wealth to 
the poor ; in all cases they were assured that their final 
acceptance before the Judge would depend upon the 
zeal they had shown in feeding the hungry, welcom¬ 
ing the stranger, and visiting the sick. The first 
definite duty which Christ imposed upon his followers 
when they began to form an organized society was 
that of travelling over the wdiole country in order to 


THE LAW OF PHILANTHROPY. 2CX) 

erne diseases. Lastly, as has been already remarked, 
he was himself constantly and principally occupied in 
the same way. 

No rule of life is more plainly deducible from the 
general law of love than this. Higher benefits may 
be conferred upon men than the alleviation of their 
physical sufferings, but there can be no more natural 
expression and no better test of humanity. Nothing is 
more certain than that he who can witness suffering 
without an attempt to relieve it, when such attempt is 
not hopeless, is not humane. The proposition is one 
of the most obvious that can be expressed in words; 
all nations not utterly savage have in a sense admitted 
it. Christ’s command had nothing in it which to a 
heathen could have seemed novel, and yet, on the 
other hand, it was not at all superfluous. For though 
there was humanity among the ancients, there was no 
philanthropy. In other words, humanity was known 
to them as an occasional impulse, but not as a standing 
rule of life. A case of distress made painfully mani¬ 
fest and prominent would often excite compassion ; 
the feeling might lead to a single act of beneficence: 
but it had not strength enough to give birth to reflec¬ 
tion or to develop itself into a speculative compassion 
for other persons equally distressed whose distresses 
were not equally manifest. Exceptional sufferings had 
therefore a chance of relief, but the ordinary sufferings 
which affected whole classes of men excited no pity, 
and were treated as part of the natural order of things, 
providential dispensations which it might even be im¬ 
pious to endeavor to counteract. Let us consider the 
example of slavery. There were in antiquity kind 


210 


ECCE HOMO. 


masters who refrained from treating their slaves with 
cruelty; when a slave was to be punished, it was not 
hard to find good-humored ‘precatores’ who would 
intercede for him; there was humanity enough to 
cause sometimes a general feeling of displeasure when 
a slave was treated with outrageous cruelty. But no 
general protest was ever made against the cruelty of 
slave-owners. No man, still less any body of men, 
thought it worth while to give time and trouble either 
to alleviating the miseries of the slave or to mitigating 
the harshness of the institution itself. If it became clear 
to any, as to a few philosophers it did, that the institu¬ 
tion was unjust, and if unjust then of necessity a mon¬ 
strous injustice, they quietly noted the fact, but never 
stirred hand or foot to remedy it, and the majority of 
mankind were not sufficiently interested in each other’s 
happiness to discover the existence of any such social 
injustice at all. 

When this lethargy passed away and humanity be¬ 
came a passion in the first Christians, it issued by the 
lips of Christ an imperative ordinance making the 
sorrows of each a burden upon all. Henceforth it 
became the duty of every man gravely to consider the 
condition of the world around him. It became his 
duty to extend his regards beyond the circle of his 
personal interests, and sometimes to open the gate of 
his privacy and relieve the beggar who might be lying 
outside full of sores. Nor was he to wait till the 
misery of some fellow-creature forced itself rudely 
upon li 5 notice and affected his sensibility. On the 
contrary he was to bear habitually in his heart the load 
of the world’s distress. Pity was to be henceforth no 


THE LAW OF PHILANTHROPY. 211 

stranger greeted occasionally, but a familiar companion 
and bosom-friend. Nor was he to make philanthropy 
the amusement of his leisure, but one of the occupa¬ 
tions of his life. He was to give alms ; that is, he was 
to relieve his fellow-creature at the cost of some per¬ 
sonal loss to himself, and Christ held that a despicable 
Christianity which flung to the poor some unregarded 
superfluity ; he valued more the mite which the widow 
spared out of her poverty. 

The obligation of philanthropy is for all ages, but 
if we consider the particular modes of philanthropy 
which Christ prescribed to his followers we shall find 
that they were suggested by the special conditions of 
that age. The same spirit of love which dictated them, 
working in this age upon the same problems, would 
find them utterly insufficient. No man who loves his 
kind can in these days rest content with waiting as a 
servant upon human misery, when it is in so many 
cases possible to anticipate and avert it. Prevention 
is better than cure, and it is now clear to all that a 
large part of human suffering is preventible by im¬ 
proved social arrangements. Chaiity will now, if it 
be genuine, fix upon this enterprise as greater, more 
widely and permanently beneficial, and therefore more 
Christian than the other. It will not, indeed, neglect 
the lower task of relieving and consoling those who, 
whether through the errors and unskilful arrangements 
of society or through causes not yet preventible, have 
actually fallen into calamity. Its compassion will be 
all the deeper, its relief more prompt and zealous, 
because it does not generally, as former generators 
did, recognize such calamities to be part of man's 


212 


ECCE HOMO. 


inevitable destiny. It will hurry with the more painful 
eagerness tc remedy evils which it feels ought never to 
have befallen. But when it has done all which the 
New Testament enjoins, it will feel that its task is not 
half fulfilled. When the sick man has been visited 
and everything done which skill and assiduity can do 
to cure him, modern charity will go on to considei the 
causes of his malady, what noxious influence besetting 
his life, what contempt of the laws of health in his 
diet or habits, may have caused it, and then to inquire 
whether others incur the same dangers and may be 
warned in time. When the starving man has been 
relieved, modern charity inquires whether any fault 
in the social system deprived him of his share of 
nature’s bounty, any unjust advantage taken by the 
strong over the weak, any rudeness or want of culture 
in himself wrecking his virtue and his habits of thrift. 
The truth is, that though the morality of Christ is 
theoretically perfect, and not subject, as the Mosaic 
morality was, to a further development, the practical 
morality of the first Christians has been in a great 
I degree rendered obsolete by the later experience of 
.mankind, which has taught us to hope more and 
undertake more for the happiness of our fellow-crea¬ 
tures. The command to care for the sick and suffer¬ 
ing remains as divine as ever and as necessary as ever 
to be obe}'ed, but it has become, like the Decalogue, 
an elementary part of morality, early learnt, and not 
sufficient to satisfy the Christian enthusiasm. As the 
early Christians learnt that it was not enough to do no 
harm and that they were bound to give meat to the 
hungry and clothing to the naked, we have learnt that 


THE LAW OF PHILANTHROPY. 213 

a still further obligation lies upon us to prevent, il 
possible, the pains of hunger and nakedness from 
being ever felt. 

This last duty was as far beyond die conception 
of the earliest Christians as the second was beyond 
the conception of those for whom Moses legislated. 
Many things concealed it from the eye if the con« 
science. First the obscure social position of the first 
Christians. They belonged for the most part to the 
subject races of the Roman Empire. The govern¬ 
ment of affairs, the ordering of the social system, 
was in other hands. Their masters were jealous and 
reserved. Little concerted action of any kind was 
allowed to them. Any protest they might have made 
against social inequalities and injustices would have 
died away utterly unheeded. There was no channel 
through which those who discerned an evil could 
communicate with those who had the power of re¬ 
moving it. At such a time reforms were out of the 
question. It would have been simply useless and 
perilous to lay a hand upon the ponderous wheels of 
the social system which crushed the lives and limbs of 
men at every revolution. All that could be done was 
to be at hand to tend the victims, to rescue as many 
wounded as possible, and shed a tear over the dead. 

But the principal reason why the philanthropy 
prescribed by the Gospel is so rudimentary was 
probably a different one. The first Christians were 
probably not so much hopeless of accomplishing great 
social reforms as unripe for the conception of them. 
The instinct of compassion, which joined to a san¬ 
guine spirit of hope produces the modern systematic 


214 


ECCE HOMO. 


Reformer, was newborn and infantine in them. It 
bad as yet everything to learn, both as to the evils 
which were to be cured and as to the possibility and 
means of curing them. On both points the ancients 
labored under a blindness which we can only un¬ 
derstand by an effort of reflection. They did not 
easily recognize evil to be evil, and they did not 
believe, or rather they had never dreamed, that it 
could be cured. Habit dulls the senses and puts the 
critical faculty' to sleep. The fierceness and hardness 
cf ancient manners is apparent to us, but the ancients 
themselves were not shocked by sights which were 
familiar to them. To us it is sickening to think of 
the gladiatorial show, of the massacres common in 
Roman warfare, of the infanticide practised by grave 
and respectable citizens, who did not merely condemn 
their children to death, but often in practice, as they 
well knew, to what was still worse — a life of prostitu¬ 
tion and beggary. The Roman regarded a gladiatorial 
show as we regard a hunt; the news of the slaughter 
of two hundred thousand Helvetians by Caesar or half 
a million Jews by Titus excited in his mind a thrill 
of triumph; infanticide committed by a friend ap¬ 
peared to him a prudent measure of household 
economy. To shake off this paralysis of the moral 
sense produced by habit, to see misery to be misery 
and cruelty' to be cruelty', requires not merely a strong 
but a trained and matured compassion. It was prob¬ 
ably as much as the first Christians could learn at 
once to relieve the sick, the starving, and the desolate. 
Only after centuries of this simple philanthropy 
could they' learn to criticise the fundamental usages 


THE LAW OF PHILANTHROPY. 215 

of society itself, and acquire courage to pronounce 
that, however deeply-rooted and time-honored, they 
were in many cases shocking to humanity. 

Closely connected with this insensibility to the real 
character of common usages is a positive unwilling¬ 
ness to reform them. The argument of prejudice is 
twofold. It is not only that what has lasted a long 
time must be right, but also that what has lasted a 
long time, right or wrong, must be intended to con¬ 
tinue. That reverence for existing usages, which is 
always strong in human nature, was far stronger in 
antiquity than it is now. The belief in the wisdom 
of ancestors, which seems to be caused by the curious 
delusion that ancestors must needs be old and there¬ 
fore deeply experienced men, was stronger among the 
ancients than among the moderns, because their im¬ 
pression of their ancestors was derived not from 
history but from poetry. They traced their institu¬ 
tions to semi-divine or inspired legislators, and held it 
almost impious to change what came to them marked 
w T ith such authority; while we, however proud we 
may be of our ancestors, do not disguise from our¬ 
selves that they were barbarians, and can hardly fancy 
their handiwork incapable of improvement. 

Thus the Enthusiasm of Humanity, if it move us 
ii: this age to consider the physical needs of our fellow- 
creatures, will not be contented with the rules and 
methods which satisfied those who first felt its power. 
JJreathed from the lips of Christ or descending from 
heaven at the Pentecostal feast, it entered into men 
who had grown to manhood in a cruel and hard¬ 
hearted world and who were accustomed to selfishness. 


216 


ECCE HOMO. 


When Love was waked in his dungeon and his fetters 
struck oiF, he must at first have found his joints too 
stiff for easy motion. It entered into the subjects of a 
world-wide tyranny, who never raised their thoughts 
to large or public interests, over which they could not 
hope to have influence. It entered into men of nar- 
iow cultivation, who had no conception of progress or 
of the purpose that runs through the ages, no high 
ideal of the happiness that the race may attain through 
the labors of the good of every generation in its cause, 
no suspicion that the whole framework of society 
compared to what it might be was as the hut of a 
savage to a Grecian temple. It entered into men who 
in their simplicity revered the barbaric past and placed 
behind them that golden age for which they should 
have looked forwards. And therefore it could but 
rouse them to a philanthropy which, though glorious 
in the spirit that animated it, was faint and feeble in 
its enterprises, the half-despairing attempt of a genera¬ 
tion which had more love than hope. 

We are advanced by eighteen hundred years beyond 
the apostolic generation. All the narrowing influences 
which have been enumerated have ceased to operate. 
Our minds are set free, so that we may boldly criticise 
the usages around us, knowing them to be but imper¬ 
fect essays towards order and happiness, and no di¬ 
vinely or supernaturally ordained constitution which 
it would be impious to change. We have witnessed 
improvements in physical well-being which incline us 
to expect further progress and make us keen-sighted 
to detect the evils and miseries that remain. The 
channels of communication between nations and their 


THE LAW OF PHILANTIIROIY. 


217 


governments are free, so that the thought of the pri¬ 
vate philanthropist may mould a whole community. 
And, finally, we have at our disposal a vast treasure 
of science, from which we may discover what physi¬ 
cal well-being is and on what conditions it depends. 
In these circumstances the Gospel precepts of philan¬ 
thropy become utterly insufficient. It is not now 
enough to visit the sick and give alms to the poor. 
We may still use the words as a kind of motto, but 
we must understand under them a multitude of things 
which they do not express. If we would make them 
express the whole duty of philanthropy in this age, 
we must treat them as preachers sometimes treat the 
Decalogue, when they represent it as containing by 
implication a whole system of morality. Christ com¬ 
manded his first followers to heal the sick and give 
alms, but he commands the Christians of this age — 
if w*e may use the expression — to investigate the 
causes of all physical evil, to master the science of 
health, to consider the question of education with a 
view to health, the question of labor with a view to 
health, the question of trade with a view to health ; 
and while all these investigations are made, with free 
expense of energy and time and means, to work out 
the rearrangement of human life in accordance with 
the results they give. 

Thus ought the Enthusiasm of Humanity to work 
in these days, and thus, plainly enough, it does work. 
These investigations are constantly being made, these 
reforms commenced. But perhaps it is rather among 
those who are influenced by general philanthropy and 
generosity, that is, by indirect or secondary Christian- 

10 


2 18 


ECCE HOMO, 


ity, than among those who profess to draw the Enthu¬ 
siasm directly from its fount, that this spirit reigns. 
Perhaps those who appear the most devoted Chris¬ 
tians are somewhat jealous of what they may consider 
this worldly machinery. They think they must needs 
be most Christian when they stick most closely to the 
New Testament, and that what is utterly absent from 
the New Testament cannot possibly be an impoitant 
part of Christianity. A great mistake, arising from a 
wide-spread paralysis of true Christian feeling in the 
modern Church! The New Testament is not the 
Christian law; the precepts of Apostles, the special 
commands of Christ, are not the Christian law. To 
make them such is to throw the Church back into that 
legal system from which Christ would have set it free. 
The Christian law is the spirit of Christ, that Enthu¬ 
siasm of Humanity which he declared to be the source 
from which all right action flows. What it dictates, 
and that alone, is law for the Christian. And if the 
progress of science and civilization has put into our 
hands the means of benefiting our kind more and 
more comprehensively than the first Christians could 
hope to do — if instead of undoing a little harm and 
comforting a few unfortunates we have the means of 
averting countless misfortunes and raising, by the 
right employment of our knowledge and power of 
contrivance, the general standard of happiness — we 
are not to inquire whether the New Testament com¬ 
mands us to use these means, but whether the spirit 
of humanity commands it. 

But, say the cautious, is it safe to follow a mere en¬ 
thusiasm ? If Christ is to be believed, it is not safe to 


THE LAW OF PHILANTHROPY. 219 

follow anything else. According to him this Spirit 
was expressly given to guide men into all truth. But, 
they will rejoin — and here the truth comes out — we 
like to feel the stay of a written precept; we are not 
conscious of any such ardent impulse directing us in¬ 
fallibly what to do. In reply to which what can w e 
do but repeat the question of St. Paul, 4 Into what then 
were ye baptized ? * 


220 


CHAPTER XVI1T. 

THE LAW OF EDIFICATION. 
HIEANTHROPY is the first and easiest lessoa 



in positive morality. It is a duty in which all 
Christian sects agree and which with more or less 
zeal they perform. The means used may differ ; the 
means used in this age differ widely from those used 
in the first ages ; but the obligation which the first 
Christians acknowledged is substantially the same as 
that acknowledged now. When they visited the sick 
and made provision for widows and orphans and gave 
alms to the poor, they were doing to the best of their 
light and knowledge what philanthropists of the pres¬ 
ent day do when they study the science of physical 
well-being, search into the causes of disease and suf¬ 
fering, and endeavor systematically to raise the stan¬ 
dard of happiness to the highest possible point. 

Did the Enthusiasm of Humanity rest content with 
this? It might have done so. Perhaps there are 
some who believe that this is in fact the substance of 
Christianity, and that all the rest has been overlaid 
upon the original system. This is not true, and it will 
hardly seem plausible to a reader who has given even 
a general assent thus far to the results of the present 
investigation. But we shall find it easier to under¬ 
stand what the substance of C hristianity really is, if 


THE LAW OF EDIFICATION. 


221 


we consider attentively what Christianity would have 
been and how it would have worked if this theory of 
it were true. How the persons who hold this theory 
regard Christianity we may make clear to ourselves hy 
a comparison. The present century has witnessed a 
remarkable softening of manners. A number of cruel 
pi actices and severities, that excited no disgust a hun¬ 
dred years ago, have now been either swept away as 
intolerable or are reluctantly tolerated from a feeling 
of necessity. Among these are the torture of the 
wheel, the pillory, the punishment of death. And in 
private life during the same period men have greatly 
advanced in tenderness, sympathy, and unwillingness 
to inflict pain. This improvement was doubtless 
caused by the decay of feudal, chivalrous, and semi- 
barbaric institutions which had cherished hard and 
warlike habits of life. Society in the last century 
entered upon a new period. For this new period 
there arose new legislators, and it may probably be 
said that the fashion of gentleness in feelings and 
manners was introduced mainly through the influence 
of Jean Jacques Rousseau. 

Now the first century, like the eighteenth, was a 
period of transition. It was a period when for the 
first time the civilized nations of the world lived 
together in almost unbroken peace. War had ceased 
to be the main business of life, the support of virtue 
and almost the only means by which eminent virtue 
could show itself. In these circumstances the world 
was prepared for, was calling for, a theory of virtue 
which should be adapted to its new condition. It 
wanted a new pursuit in place of war, a pursuit in 


223 


ECCE HOMO. 


which, as before in war, the moral feelings might find 
satisfaction and in which heroism might be displayed. 
Christ, it may be maintained, was the social legislator 
who appeared in answer to this call. He induced a 
large number of people by his eloquence and enthusi¬ 
asm to devote themselves to philanthropy. He opened 
their eyes to the suffering and horrors of which the 
woild was full, and pointed out to them a noble and 
satisfying occupation for their energies and a path to 
the truest glory in the enterprise of alleviating this 
misery. 

There is no doubt that a philanthropic movement 
such as is here supposed was possible and would have 
been highly beneficial in the first century. As five 
centuries before, a ferment in the Greek mind, arising 
out of a general advance in civilization and the influ¬ 
ence of several remarkable men, led to the appearance 
in the world of an entirely new character which has 
never since disappeared — the sophist or philosopher , 
so it was natural enough that in the first century of 
the Christian era philanthropists should be heard of 
for the first time, and that they should take their rise 
out of a moral ferment excited by a great preacher. 
A sect of philanthropists might have spread every¬ 
where, and gradually influenced rulers, and by this 
means manners might have been considerably softened. 
The Christians were no doubt such a sect, but were 
they merely this ? Suppose the philanthropical scheme 
to be far more successful than it was likely to be, sup¬ 
pose it to succeed perfectly in producing physical com¬ 
fort everywhere, and banishing from human life all 
forms of pain and suffering, such a result would 


THE LAW OF EDIFICATION. 


223 


certainly not have been satisfactoiy to Christ. He 
described in one of his parables a man such as philan¬ 
thropy might produce if it were perfectly successful, a 
man enjoying every physical comfort and determining 
to give himself up to enjoyment, but he describes him 
rather with horror than with satisfaction. And though 
so much of his life was passed in relieving distress, 
we never find him representing physical happiness as 
a desirable condition ; on the contrary, most of his 
beatitudes are pronounced upon those who suffer. 
The ideal of the economist, the ideal of the Old Tes¬ 
tament writers, does not appear to be Christ’s. He 
feeds the poor, but it is not his great object to bring 
about a state of things in which the poorest shall be 
sure of a meal; he recalls dead men to life, but his 
wisdom does not, like Solomon’s, carry length of days 
in her right hand, and in her left hand riches and 
honor. Rather does it carry with it suffering, perse¬ 
cution, and the martyr’s death. He corrects him who 
said, Blessed are they who shall eat bread in the king¬ 
dom of God. The kingdom of God does not exist 
for the sake of eating and drinking. He preaches 
peace, and yet he says, I am not come to send peace 
but a sword. 

The paradox is not very difficult to explain. A 
good parent will be careful of the physical condition 
of his child, will tend him assiduousl} 7, in sickness, 
relieve his wants, and endeavor in every way to make 
him happy. But a good parent will not rest content 
with seeing his child comfortable and secure from pain. 
He will consider that other and greater things than 
physical comfort are to be procured for him, and for 


224 


ECCE HOMO. 


the sake of these greater things he will even sacrifice 
some of his comforts and see with satisfaction that the 
child suffers a certain amount of pain and wants some 
pleasures. The affection which pets and pampers its 
object is not excessive, as it is sometimes described, 
but a feeble affection, or at least the affection of a 
feeble nature. Now the love of Christ for human 
nature was no such feeble affection. It was not an 
exceedingly keen sensibility which made him feel mure 
painfully than other men the sufferings of which the 
world is full. It was a powerful, calm, and contem¬ 
plative love. It was a love of men for what they may 
be, a love of the ideal man in each man, or, as Christ 
himself might have said, a love of the image of God 
in each man. Accordingly the Enthusiasm of Human¬ 
ity in him did not propose to itself principally to pro¬ 
cure gratifications and enjoyments for the senses of 
men, but to make the divine image more glorious in 
them and to purge it as far as possible of impurities. 

That ideal which Christ contemplated directly in 
God his followers found in him. And thus arises the 
second great obligation of Positive Morality, the obli¬ 
gation, namely, to use every means to raise men to the 
moral elevation of Christ. This obligation was brought 
home to the Christian by the natural working of the 
Enthusiasm of Humanity in him. Excited as it was 
b} T the contemplation of Christ, it could not be con¬ 
tented with diffusing physical well-being. He who 
had himself become humane desired indeed that others 
should be happy, but still more that they too should 
become humane. This dictate of the Christian spirit 
Christ threw into the form of a special command when 


THE LAW OF EDIFICATION. 


223 

he bade his disciples go everywhere, not merely heal¬ 
ing diseases, but also proclaiming the kingdom of God 
and baptizing. It was natural that the command 
should take this particular form, because, as we have 
6een, Christ regarded it as essential to the diffusion of 
true humanity that men should form themselves into a 
society of which humanity should be the law, and thal 
they should signalize their entrance into it by under* 
going a special rite of purification. 

But here again we remark that the command is 
limited by the peculiar condition of the nascent 
Church, and that if it were performed to the utmost 
the Enthusiasm of Humanity would still remain en¬ 
tirely unsatisfied. There comes a time when the work 
of baptism has been already accomplished. We, for 
example, live in the midst of a baptized community; 
the command has become for us unnecessary or rather 
impossible to be fulfilled. But to meet the new cir¬ 
cumstances, though Christ is silent, the spirit of Christ 
issues a new command. The Enthusiasm of Hu¬ 
manity tells us that though all are baptized all are not 
yet truly humane. It may be true that almost all are 
conscious of impulses and compunctions which are 
due directly or indirectly to Christianity, but the glow¬ 
ing humanity which alone Christ valued is surely not 
even common, much less universal, among the bap¬ 
tized. To rekindle this in those who have lost itj 
or in those who though nominally Christians have 
never really conceived it, or in those who have 
adopted one of the countless perversions of Chris¬ 
tianity, and have never understood that this enthusi¬ 
asm is the true Christian law, here is work for the 


22b 


ECCE HOMO. 


Christian concerning which Christ left no command 
because it could not arise in the infant Church. As 
early, however, as the Apostolic age itself, it had be¬ 
gun to be the principal occupation of Christians. St. 
Paul’s Epistles throughout regard the Christian Enthu¬ 
siasm as liable to remission, depression, and languor. 
Continually therefore he exhorts the Christians to 
whom he writes to remember their ideal. His admo¬ 
nitions to activity in philanthropical works are brief 
and few though always earnest; but when he en¬ 
deavors to keep alive their humanity, when he admon¬ 
ishes them to excite and cherish it in each other, then 
he is copious and vehement. This is the subject 
nearest his heart. His anxiety is not so much to hear 
that the widows and orphans are duly supplied, and 
that within the circle of the Christian community want 
is disappearing and the ills of life are sensibly dimin¬ 
ished, as to be informed that his converts are conform¬ 
ing gradually more and more to their ideal. This 
conformity he expresses by various figures of speech. 
It is to ‘ put on Christ,’ ‘ to put on the new man, the 
new Adam ; ’ it is 4 to have Christ dwelling in the 
heart,’ 4 Christ formed within; ’ it is 4 to fill up the 
measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.’ 

So important a duty necessarily received a name. 
As the moral science of that time furnished no term 
which could describe it, the Christians denoted it by a 
metaphorical expression which has passed into modern 
languages. It has been remarked that the Christian 
summuin bonum was a social one, it was the welfare 
of the Christian society. The whole duty of the Chris¬ 
tian was to fill satisfactorily his place in that society. 


THE LAW OF EDIFICATION. 


2 3 7 


Now it is a universal usage of language that the build¬ 
ing in which any society meets may be put for the 
society itself, and vice versa that the building may be 
called after the society. The word house means some- 
limes the building in which a family lives, sometimes 
the family that lives in such a building; a college is 
sometimes a building in which learning is cultivated, 
sometimes the society that cultivates learning in such 
a building. The same remark applies to all similar 
words, such as club, bank, hospital, city. Among 
others it applies to the word church, which in like 
manner may be used either to describe a building or a 
society. This inveterate habit of language indicates 
the intimate association which forms itself in every 
mind between the two notions of a corporation and an 
edifice. No one can speak long in impassioned or 
rhetorical style about any society whatever without 
introducing metaphors drawn from architecture. The 
Christian writers fell immediately into the practice, and 
in doing so followed the example of Christ who said, 
4 Upon this rock will I build my church.’ In this 
style of language, then, as the Church is a building, 
so each member of it is a stone, and the prosperity of 
the Church is expressed by the orderly arrangement 
and secure cementing of the stones. It follows that 
the labor of making men Christians and inspiring 
them with the Enthusiasm of Humanity is nothing 
else but the arrangement and cementing of the stones. 
In other words, it is building. This then was the 
name which the Christians adopted. 4 Let everything 
be done,’ says St. Paul, 4 with a view to building.' 
1 he phrase has been adopted into modern languages, 


228 


ECCE HOMO. 


yet in such a way as to destroy all its force. Instead 
of being translated, it has been directly transferred 
from the ecclesiastical Latin of the first centuries in 
the form of edification. The Christian law, then, 
which we are now discussing, may be called the Law 
of Edification. 

This second Christian obligation-—the obligation, 
e s the same Apostle expresses it, to 4 provoke others 
to love ’ — is as much greater than the obligation of 
philanthropy as it is a better thing for a man to be 
good than to be prosperous. And in all cases of con¬ 
flict between the two obligations the greater of course 
suspends the less. Christianity therefore is not iden¬ 
tical with philanthropy, nor does it always dictate the 
course of action which may directly issue in happiness 
and prosperity for others. It regards temporal pros¬ 
perity as no indispensable or unmixed blessing; its 
summum bonum is that healthy condition of the soul 
in which, influenced by the instinct of humanity, it 
becomes incapable of sin. This healthy condition is 
called in the dialect of Christianity 4 life ’ or 4 salva¬ 
tion/ and Christ was in the habit of declaring it to be 
a blessing in comparison of which temporal happiness 
■s utterly insignificant. There is nothing, he says, 
which a man can give in exchange for his soul; if he 
gain the whole world and lose that , what is he the 
better? All manner of physical suffering, therefoie, is 
to be cheerfully endured rather than that the life ol the 
soul should be sacrificed or enfeebled. If danger as¬ 
sail the soul through the right hand or the right eye, 
and it can be averted in no other way, we are to cut 
oil' the hand or pluck out the eye. He gives us at the 


THE LAW OF EDIFICATION. 229 

same time to understand that not only have we some¬ 
times to choose between temporal happiness and 
spiritual health, but that suffering' and sorrow have 
often a direct tendency to produce spiritual health. 
They may serve the purpose of a wholesome disci¬ 
pline. Accordingly he pronounces a blessing on those 
that mourn, and speaks ominously and forebodingly 
of the temptations attending riches and a state of tem¬ 
poral prosperity. 

If we are not to regard prosperity as the first of 
blessings for ourselves, if we are not to seek it in pref¬ 
erence to everything else for ourselves, if we are to 
acquiesce sometimes for ourselves in a state of suffer¬ 
ing, it follows that we ought to do so for our neigh¬ 
bors. A humane man will certainly be pleased to see 
his fellow-creatures enjoying comfort, but if he be 
deeply humane he will never be satisfied with this ; if 
their prosperity last long and be unalloyed he will even 
become dissatisfied, he will jealously watch for the 
appearance of those vices which prosperity breeds — 
insolence, selfishness, superficiality in thought, infir¬ 
mity in purpose, and a luxurious baseness which is 
the death of the soul. If he discern these vices, if 
they show themselves visibly, the humane man may at 
last come to call out for sorrow; or, if this be too 
boldly said, yet at least if to men thus demoralized 
calamities happen at last, and wholesome labors be 
imposed, and they T^e made to support some stern 
agony of endurance, he will witness the visitation with 
a solemn satisfaction, and far more than he rejoiced 
before to see their pleasure will he exult to see the 
gates cf that delusive Paradise closed again, and the 


2 3 0 


ECCE HOMO. 


fiery cherubim return to guard from man the fruit lie 
cannot see without temptation nor taste without ruin. 

Christ, therefore, is not merely the originator of phi¬ 
lanthropy ; and indeed the church has sustained anoth¬ 
er part on earth besides that of the Sister of Charity. 
She has not merely sat by sick-beds, and played the 
Lady Bountiful to poor people, and rushed between 
meeting armies on the field of battle to reconcile the 
combatants by reminding them of their brotherhood. 
Christianity is not quite the mild and gentle system it 
is sometimes represented to be. Christ was meek and 
lowly, but he was something beside. What was he 
when he faced the leading men among his countrymen 
and denounced them as a brood of vipers on their way 
to the infernal fires? That speech which has been 
quoted above, 1 1 am not come to send peace but a 
sword,’ will appear, when considered, to be the most 
tremendous speech ever uttered. Burke’s wish that 
the w x ar with France which he foresaw might prove a 
long war has been stigmatized as horrible. It was 
certainly an awful wish ; it may well cause those who 
look only to physical and immediate happiness to 
shudder ; but from Burke’s premises it was justifiable. 
Christ’s solemn resolution to persevere in what he felt 
to be his mission, in spite of the clearest foreknowdedge 
of the suffering and endless bloodshed which his per¬ 
severance would cause to that race of which he was the 
martyr, was grounded on a similar confidence that the 
evil w r as preparatory to a greater good, and that if some 
happiness was to be sacrificed, it would be the price of 
a great moral advance. But the resolution was not¬ 
withstanding a most awful one, and should impres- 


THE LAW OF EDIFICATION - . 


231 


sively teach us not to confound Christianity with mere 
philanthropy, not to suppose that what is shocking is 
of necessity unchristian, not to confound warmhearted¬ 
ness. bonhommie, or feminine sensibilities with the 
Enthusiasm of Humanity. 

It has been remarked above that the machinery of 
philanthropy among the early Christians had all the 
rudeness which it might be expected to have at a time 
of little freedom, either of action or organization. In¬ 
stead of studying comprehensively the science of hu¬ 
man well-being and devising systematic methods of 
producing and increasing it, they contented themselves 
with tending the sick, pensioning widows and orphans, 
and distributing alms. The means they adopted for 
performing the second great obligation, that of con¬ 
verting mankind to Christian humanity or holiness, 
were equally simple and below the requirements and 
powers of the present age. They used the one instru¬ 
ment of direct moral suasion. To the heathen they 
freached , to those already baptized they prophesied. 
They related to their converts the principal facts of 
Christ’s life, they told the story of his death and resur¬ 
rection, they instructed them in the moralitv and the- 
ology he had given to his Church. More effectively 
than this, but without organization or contrivance, 
there worked within the Church and outwards round 
its whole circumference the living, diffusive, assimila¬ 
tive power of the Christian Humanity. As there are 
still many Christians who cling to the old modes of 
philanthropy because they are the only modes pre¬ 
scribed by the New Testament, so may the modern 
Churcl be fairly charged with confining itself too ex- 


232 


ECCE HOMO. 


clusively to preaching and catechising in the work of 
conversion and edification. Preaching and catechis¬ 
ing may still be useful and important, but many other 
instruments are now at our command, and these instru¬ 
ments it is none the less the duty of Christians to use 
because the New Testament says nothing about them. 

The enthusiasm can indeed hardly be kindled except 
by a personal influence acting through example or im¬ 
passioned exhortation. When Christ would kindle it 
in his disciples he breathed on them and said, ‘ Re¬ 
ceive die Holy Spirit;’ intimating by this great sym¬ 
bolical act that life passes into the soul of a man, as it 
were by contagion from another living soul. It may 
indeed come to a man through the mere bounty of 
God, but of means that men can use to kindle it there 
is none beside their personal influence passing either 
directly from man to man or diffused by means of 
books. Contrivance, however, and organization may 
do much in marshalling this personal influence, in 
bringing it to bear upon the greatest number and in 
the most effective way; it may also do much in pre¬ 
venting men’s natural susceptibility to the enthusiasm 
from being dulled by adverse circumstances, and in 
giving fuel to the enthusiasm when it already burns. 
As it is the duty of Christians to study human well¬ 
being systematically with a view to philanthropy, so 
is it their duty with a view to edification to consider at 
large the conditions most favorable to goodness, and 
by what social arrangements temptations to vice may 
be reduced to the lowest point and goodness have the 
most and the most powerful motives. Here is a whole 
field of investigation upon which Christians are bound 


THE LAW OF EDIFICATION. 


2 33 


to enter; much doubtless has been already done in it, 
but not perhaps with much system, nor has it been 
sufficiently felt that it is a principal part of the work 
belonging properly to the Church. 

The conditions most favorable to goodness ! It will 
be well to consider in some detail what these are, 
remembering always that by goodness is meant the 
Christian Enthusiasm of Humanity. How may men 
be made most susceptible of this Enthusiasm ? 

It has been shown that the attractive powei which 
throughout has acted upon men, which has preserved 
them from that isolation which is the opposite of Chris¬ 
tianity, and which has united them in those communi¬ 
ties of clan or city or state which were the germs and 
embryos of the Universal Christian Republic, is the tie 
of kindred. The state, we have seen, was founded on 
a fiction of blood-relationship, and Christianity uses 
the dialect of blood-relationship when it pronounces 
all mankind to be brothers. What is true of mankind 
in general will be found to be true in this case of the 
individual man. He in whom the family affections 
have been awakened will have a heart most open to 
the passion of humanity. It is useless to tell a man to 
love all mankind if he has never loved any individ¬ 
ual of mankind and only knows by report what love 
is. It should be recognized that family affection in 
some form is the almost indispensable root of Chris¬ 
tianity. This family affection is rightly called natural, 
that is to say, it will come of itself if it be not artifi¬ 
cially hindered. It becomes therefore a principal duty 
of Christians to remove all hinderances out of the way 
of familv affection. 


334 


ECCE HOMO. 


Now what are these hinderances? They are innu¬ 
merable, arising out of the endless incompatibilities 
of temperament and taste, incompatibilities of natural 
difference and those finer incompatibilities, which are 
more exquisitely painful and more malignant, arising 
out of small differences in general resemblance. For 
the removal of such hinderances no general rules can 
lie laid down. In resisting and removing them the 
higher degrees of Christian tact win their triumphs. 
Meanwhile there are other hinderances of a simpler 
kind which are, to an indefinite degree, removable 
and of which some may here be mentioned. We may 
here mention marriages of interest or convenience, the 
children of which, often originally of dull and poor 
organization, grow up in an atmosphere of cynical 
coldness which speedily kills whatever blossoms of 
kindliness their nature may put forth. In another 
class of society there rages another terrible destroyer 
of natural affection, hunger. Christ spoke of suffering 
as a wholesome discipline, but there is an extreme 
degree of suffering which seems more ruinous to the 
soul than the most enervating prosperity. When ex¬ 
istence itself cannot be supported without an unceasing 
and absorbing struggle, then there is no room in the 
heart for any desire but the wretched animal instinct 
of self-preservation, which merges in an intense, piti¬ 
able, but scarcely blamable selfishness. What tender¬ 
ness, what gratitude, what human virtue can be ex¬ 
pected of the man who is holding a wolf by the ears? 

To persons who, from either of these causes or from 
others that might be mentioned, have become destitute 
of natural affection, preaching and catechising are 


THE LAW OF EDIFICATION. 235 

almost useless. Your declamations will rouse in them 
no Enthusiasm of Humanity, but. it may be. an ec¬ 
stasy of fright or fanaticism. Instruction in morality 
or theology will not make them moral oi religious, 
but only a little more knowing and self-satisfied. A 
great example of humanity put visibly before them 
may indeed rouse in them the sense tliev want, but i: 
w 11 never have the healthy keenness and calmness it 
might Im e had. if it had been roused in the manner 
appointed by nature. Therefore all Christians who 
take an adequate view of Christian obligations will 
consider that the removal of all such social abuses as 
destrov natural affection, and by doing so kill Chris- 
tian humanity in its germ, is among the first of those 
obligations. 

But again, where natural affection exists, a peculiar 
perversion of it requires to be guarded against, which 
often makes it hostile to that very Humanity of which 
it is properly the rudimentary form. It is apt to take 
a clannish, exclusive shape, and to inspire not merely 
no love but positive hatred towards those who are 
without the circle of blood-relationship. It has been 
shown above how the very same attraction which 
created states, isolated them, created national distinc¬ 
tions. and, arising out of national distinctions, a per¬ 
manent condition of international hostility. This state 
of tilings is still far indeed from being obsolete, and 
the same abuse exists within the bosom of states in 
another form. Divisions arise, embittered by super¬ 
ciliousness on the one side and envy on the other, 
between the high-born and the low-born, and other 
advantages such as wealth and acquired station are 


ECCE HOMO. 


236 

eagerly seized by family affection as an excuse for 
tinning itself into an exclusive partiality. The dis¬ 
tinctions themselves of birth and wealth are substantial 
realities which cannot be treated as if they did not 
exist. There are superior and inferior breeds of men 
as of other animals, and the rich man will be led by 
his wealth into a mode of life which must remove him 
to a certain distance from the poor man. The danger 
is lest the distinction and the distance should turn to a 
moral division, to a separation of interests and sympa¬ 
thies in which Christian union perishes. Therefore 
against all unjust privilege, against all social arrange¬ 
ments which make the prosperity of one man incom¬ 
patible with the prosperity of another, the Christian is 
bound by his humanity to watch and protest. 

But if this danger also is escaped, and natural affec¬ 
tion be present without exclusiveness, to develop it 
into the full Christian Enthusiasm, there remains many 
other means besides preaching and purely religious 
instruction. Of these the most important xS educa¬ 
tion , which is certainly a far more powerful agent 
than preaching, inasmuch as in the first place it acts 
upon the human being at an age when he is more 
susceptible of all influences, and particularly of moral 
ones, than he afterwards becomes, and in the second 
place it acts upon him incessantly, intensely, and by 
countless different methods for a series of years, where¬ 
as preaching acts upon him intermittently, for the most 
part faintly, and by one uniform method. Preaching 
is moral suasion delivered formally at stated intervals. 
In good education there is an equal amount of moral 
suasion, delivered far more impressively because do* 


THE LAW OF EDIFICATION 


237 


livered to individuals and at the moment when the 
need arises, while besides moral suasion other instru¬ 
ments are employed. Of these the principal is Au¬ 
thority, a most potent and indispensable agent. We 
have traced above the process by which mankind were 
ripened for the reception of Christianity. For many 
ages peremptory laws were imposed upon different 
nations and enforced by a machinery of punishment. 
During these ages, out of the whole number of per¬ 
sons who obeved these laws very few either knew or 
inquired why they had been imposed. But all the 
time these nations were forming habits of action which 
gradually became so familiar to them that the nations 
who wanted similar habits became to them objects of 
contempt and disgust as savages. At last the time 
came when the hidden principle of all law was re¬ 
vealed and Christian humanity became the self-legis¬ 
lating life of mankind. Thus did the Law bring men 
to Christ. Now what the Law did for the race the 
schoolmaster does for the individual. He imposes 
ndes, assigning a penalty for disobedience. Under 
this rule the pupil grows up, until order, punctuality, 
industry, justice and mercy to his school-fellows be¬ 
come the habits of his life. Then when the time 
comes, the strict rule relaxes, the pupil is taken into 
the master’s confidence, his obedience becomes reason¬ 
able, a living morality. If the teacher be one whose 
own morality attains the standard of the Christian 
Enthusiasm, the pupil is more likely to be initiated 
into the same supreme mystery than if he stood in any 
other relation to him. There is no moral influence in 
the world, excepting that occasionally exerted by great 


238 


ECCE HOMO. 


men, comparable to that of a good teacher; there is 
no position in which a man’s merits, considered as 
moral levers, have so much purchase. Therefore the 
whole question of education — what the method of it 
should be, what men should be employed in it — is 
preeminently a question in which Christians are bound 
by their Humanity to interest themselves. 

Let us advance a step farther, and in considering the 
conditions favorable to goodness it will be convenient 
to isolate a particular case. We have before us, then, 
the child of parents to whose mutual love he ow r es a 
healthy organization and a fresh flow of natural feel¬ 
ing, to the moderate prosperity of whose condition he 
owes an exemption from brutalizing anxieties, and 
who haA e instilled into him no prejudice of caste. 
He has had a teacher who trained him as Providence 
trained mankind, assuming at the proper season the 
part of Moses, then that of Isaiah, then that of the 
Baptist, ushering him into the very presence of Christ. 
Into that presence he has entered, and we see a young 
man in whose mind there has ripened by natural 
development out of the sense of duty to kindred and 
country a commanding sense of duty to that Universal 
Commonwealth of men whose majesty he worships 
gathered up in the person of its Eternal Sovereign., 
Christ Jesus. Does manhood bring new dangers to 
such a person? What are they? And what safe¬ 
guards can be provided against them? 

The most formidable temptation of manhood is that 
which Christ described in a phrase hardly translatable 
as fiiwTixal. To boys and youths work is 

assigned bv their parents or tutors. The judicious 


THE LAW OF EDIFICATION. 


239 


parent takes care not to assign so much work as to 
make his son a slave. We cherish as much as possible 
the freedom, the discursiveness of thought and feeling 
natural to youth. We cherish it as that which life is 
likely sooner or later to diminish, and if we curb it, 
we do so that it may not exhaust itself by its own 
vivacity. But in manhood work is not assigned to us 
by others who are interested in our welfare, but b_y a 
ruthless and tyrannous necessity which takes small 
account of our powers or our happiness. And the 
source of the happiness of manhood, a family, doubles 
its anxieties. Hence middle life tends continually to 
routine, to the mechanic tracing of a contracted circle. 
A man finds or fancies that the care of his own family 
is as much as he can undertake, and excuses himself 
from most of his duties to humanity. In many cases, 
owing to the natural difficulty of obtaining a livelihood 
in a particular country or to remediable social abuses, 
such a man’s conduct is justified by necessity, but in 
many more it arises from the blindness of natural 
affection, making it difficult for him to think that he 
has done enough for his family while it is possible for 
him to do more. Christ bids us look to it that we be 
not weighed down by these worldly cares, which 
indeed if not resisted must evidently undo all that 
Christianity has done and throw men back into the 
clannish condition out of which it redeemed them. 
How many a man who at twenty was full of zeal, 
high-minded designs and plans of a life devoted to 
humanity, after the cares of middle life have come 
upon him and one or two schemes contrived with the 
inexperience of youth have failed, retains nothing of 


240 


ECCE HOMO. 


the Enthusiasm with which he set out but a willing¬ 
ness to relieve distress whenever it crosses his path, 
and perhaps a habit of devoting an annual sum of 
money to charitable purposes ! 

To protect the lives of men from sinking into a 
routine of narrow-minded drudgery, the Christian 
Church has introduced the invaluable institution of the 
Sunday . Following the example of the old Jewish 
Church, it proclaims a truce once in seven days to all 
personal anxieties and degrading thoughts about the 
means of subsistence and success in life, and bids us 
meet together to indulge in larger thoughts, to give 
ourselves time to taste Heaven’s bounty, and to drink 
together out of ‘ the chalice of the grapes of God.’ In 
countries where life is a hard struggle, what more 
precious, more priceless public benefit can be imagined 
than this breathing-time, this recurring armistice be¬ 
tween man and the hostile powers that beset his life, 
this solemn sabbatic festival? Connected with the 
Sunday is the institution of preaching or, as it is 
called in the New Testament, prophesying. The 
power of impassioned rhetoric over those whose occu¬ 
pations do not leave them much time for reading is 
very great, and when the preacher speaks out of the 
overflowing of a genuine Christian enthusiasm, his 
words will echo in the memories of many until the 
Sunday comes round again. In periods when the pul¬ 
pits of a country are occupied by the foremost men of 
their time for genius and wisdom this institution may 
sway and form the whole mind of a nation. 

Besides the Sunday and the institution of preaching 
there exist certain societies formed to war against 


THE LAW OF EDIFICATION. 


24I 


social, political, or moral evils and in various ways 
to benefit mankind, by interesting himself in which 
the grown man may support the Christian humanity 
within him. 

The !■ itQifivui Sionr/.ul are an overwhelming host. It 
6eems desirable to supply as many and as potent in¬ 
struments as possible to him who would combat them. 
Valuable as the three instruments just mentioned are. it 
may be urged in deduction from the advantage of the 
Sunday and of preaching that they leave him passive; 
that if they free him for a time from his persecutors 
and revive in him the aspiration after a higher life, 
they do not supply him with the activities and the 
interests of that higher life. Societies do this, but for 
the most part at present in a very insufficient way. 
They do require from their members an effort of will, 
a deed, and one involving self-denial; they require a 
subscription of money. The money goes to furnish 
that comparatively small proportion of the members 
of the society' who are personally grappling with the 
evil to remove which the society was formed. But 
from the majority' nothing further is required ; all per¬ 
sonal sendee in the cause of humanity is commuted 
for a money-payment. So customary has this become 
that the word charity has acquired a new meaning; a 
man’s charity', that is, his love for his fellow-creatures, 

commonly estimated in pounds, shillings, and pence. 
But it is a question whether this commutation, how¬ 
ever customary, is altogether legal in the Christian 
Republic. It would appear that St. Paul recognized 
a broad distinction between charity and money-dona¬ 
tions. He seems to have thought that a man might 


11 


242 


ECCE HOMO. 


give away all his properly and yet have no charity 
Perhaps we are rather to compare the Christian Re* 
public with those famous states of antiquity which in 
their best days required the personal service of every 
citizen in the field, and only accepted a money-equiva¬ 
lent from those who were incapacitated from such 
service. It is characteristic of the Christian State that 
it depends for its very existence on the public spirit of 
its citizens. The states of the world are distinguished 
from each other visibly by geographical boundaries 
and language. But the Christian Republic scarcely 
exists apart from the Enthusiasm which animates it; 
if that dies it vanishes like a fairy city, and leaves no 
trace of its existence but empty churches and luxuri¬ 
ous sinecurists. And assuredly he who remembers his 
citizenship in it only by the taxes he pays is but one 
step removed from forgetting it altogether. 

If then the Christian Humanity is to be maintained 
at the point of enthusiasm in a man upon whom the 
cares of middle life have come, he must not content 
himself with paying others to do Christian work. He 
must contribute of his gifts, not merely of his money. 
Pie must be a soldier in the campaign against evil, 
and not merely pay the w r ar-tax. But then it is too 
much to expect that he should find work for himself. 
Spenser allegorizes ill when he represents his Red 
Cross Knight as pricking forth alone in quest of 
adventures. At least this sort of soldiering is long 
out of date. In civilized war men are marshalled in 
companies and put under the orders of a superior 
officer. To drop the figure, a flourishing Church 
requires a vast and complicated organization, which 


THE LAW OF EDIFICATION 243 

should afford a place for every one who is ready to 
work in the service of humanity. The enthusiasm 
should not be suffered to die out in any one for want 
of the occupation best calculated to keep it alive. 
Those who meet within the church walls on Sunday 
should not meet as strangers who find themselves 
together in the same lecture-hall, but as cooperators 
in a public work the object of which all understand 
and to his own department of which each man habit¬ 
ually applies his mind and contriving power. Thus 
meeting, with the esprit de corps strong among them, 
and with a clear perception of the purpose of their 
union and their meeting, they would not desire that 
the exhortation of the preacher should be, what in the 
nature of things it seldom can be, eloquent. It might 
cease then to be either a despairing and overwrought 
appeal to feelings which grow more callous the 
oftener they are thus excited to no definite purpose, or 
a childish discussion of some deep point in morality 
or divinity better left to philosophers. It might then 
become weighty with business, and impressive as an 
officer’s address to his troops before a battle. For it 
would be addressed by a soldier to soldiers in the 
presence of an enemy whose character they understood 
and in the war with whom they had given and received 
telling blows. It would be addressed to an ardent and 
hopeful association who had united for the purpose of 
contending within a given district against disease and 
distress, of diminishing by every contrivance of kindly 
sympathy the rudeness, coarseness, ignorance, and 
imprudence of the poor and the heartlessness and 
hardness of the rich, for the purpose of securing to all 


2 44 


ECCK HOMO. 


that moderate happiness which gives leisure for virtae, 
and that moderate occupation which removes the 
temptations of vice, for the purpose of providing a 
large and wise education for the young ; lastly, for the 
purpose of handing on the tradition of Christ’s life, 
death, and resurrection, maintaining the Enthusiasm 
of Humanity in all the baptized, and preseiving, in 
opposition to all temptations to superstition or fanati¬ 
cism, the filial freedom of their worship of God. 

Thus far have w r e carried our analysis of the condi¬ 
tions most favorable to the Christian spirit or Spirit 
of Humanity. It must remain incomplete. To finish 
it would lead us too far and answ r er no purpose. Our 
purpose in it is already answered if it has shown how 
much is involved in the great Law of Edification, how 
many duties that Law includes, and how large-minded 
and comprehensive in his studies and observations, 
how free from the fetters of tradition or Scripture, 
must be the man who would thoroughly fulfil it. 


CHAPTER XIX. 


THE LAW OF MERCY. 

PUT there is another aspect of the Law of Ediiica 
' tion. Hitherto we have considered it as impos¬ 
ing upon Christians the obligation of developing the 
domestic and patriotic virtue which is natural to men 
into that Christian Humanity which is its proper com¬ 
pletion, and of cherishing, as much as possible, that 
natural virtue with a view to the development of the 
Christian Humanity, and of cherishing the Christian 
Humanity itself when developed. But it continually 
happens that all methods fail of accomplishing these 
results. There is a class of men in every community 
in whom both natural and Christian humanity is at 
the lowest ebb. These will not only do nothing for 
their kind, but they are capable of committing crimes 
against society and against those nearest to them. 
Under temptation from self-interest they actually com¬ 
mit such crimes, and the precedent being once estab¬ 
lished, they for the most part fall gradually into the 
condition of avowed enemies of their kind, and con¬ 
stitute a criminal or outcast class, which is not meiely 
destitute of virtue but is, as it were, an Evil Church 
sustaining its evil by its union and propagating its 
anarchic law on every side. In exceptional cases men 
equally devoid of virtue are restrained by prudence oi 


246 


ECCE HOMO. 


timidity or fortunate circumstances from committing 
grave ciimes, and remain in the midst of the good 
undetected or tolerated but not morally better than 
the outcast on whom all turn their backs. How does 
Christianity command us to treat bad men ? Let us 
first consider whether Christ taught anything on this 
special point by precept or example, and secondly, let 
us consider what the Spirit of Humanity itself teaches. 

He made a great difference between the avowed 
and recognized criminal and the criminal whose vices 
were concealed under a veil of sanctimonious pro¬ 
fession. The latter case, however, is a complicated 
one, which it will be convenient to consider apart. 
How then did he treat the recognized criminal? In 
Palestine the distinction between the virtuous and the 
vicious class seems to have been much more marked 
than in other countries of the ancient world, and as 
much as in Christian countries at the present day. 
We read of ‘ the publicans,’ the tools of the rapacious 
farmers-general, and of ‘ the sinners,’ among whom 
..re included the prostitutes : these two classes of peo¬ 
ple were under the ban of public opinion, and those 
who laid claim to a reputation for sanctity avoided 
their contact as a pollution. This social excommuni¬ 
cation may of course in certain special cases have been 
unjust, but that it was on the whole deserved by those 
who suffered it Christ did not call in question. Now 
before we inquire how he treated these outcasts, let us 
consider how, from the knowledge of his doctrine and 
character which we have now acquired, we should 
expect him to treat them. 

I11 the course of oui investigation we have seen 


THE LAW OF MERCY. 


247 


C'nrrst tightening in an incredible degree all obliga¬ 
tions of morality. He rejects as utterly insufficient 
what had been considered by the Jews as the highest 
moral attainment. It is in vain, he says, to refrain 
from injuring your neighbor, if, notwithstanding, you 
ha\e the wish and impulse to injure him; a movement 
of hatred is, according to him, morally equivalent to a 
murder. And even if you have no such immoral im¬ 
pulses, yet ii your disposition towards your fellow- 
creatures be purely negative, if you are not actuated 
by an ardent, by an enthusiastic love and benevolence 
towards all mankind, you are morally good for noth¬ 
ing, tasteless salt not good even for the dunghill. He 
thus raises the standard of morality to the highest 
possible point. But further, he insists far more vehe¬ 
mently than previous moralists had done upon the 
absolute necessity of attaining the standard. He does 
not say, This is morality, but, as it is difficult to be 
moral, God will forgive your shortcomings. On the 
contrary he says, To be moral in this high sense is 
life and peace, not to be so is death and eternal 
damnation. In his eves a man’s moral character was 

J 

everything. He went through life looking upon men 
with the eyes of a King or Judge, confounding false 
estimates of human merit, separating the sheep from 
the goats, disregarding all other distinctions that can 
exist between men as unimportant in comparison with 
the radical distinction between the good and the bad. 
How then would such a moralist act when he found 
among his countrymen this distinction already drawn 
and firmly marked in practice ? If it was incorrectly 
drawn, he might rectify it; he might also point oul 


248 


ECCE HOMO. 


that it must needs be inadequate as not distinguishing 
immoral persons simply from moral, but only those 
whose immorality had ripened into criminal actions, 
and whose crimes had been detected, from those who 
could not be proved immoral. These important reser¬ 
vations he would undoubtedly make, but having done 
so, would he not be likely to stamp the distinction 
with his approval and make it ten times more strin¬ 
gent ? 

Another train of reflection leads to the same conclu¬ 
sion. One who loves his kind is likely to regard in¬ 
juries done to human beings with greater indignation 
than one who does not. If the Jews, under the do¬ 
minion of formularies and a somewhat outworn legis¬ 
lation, had arrived at so much energy of moral re¬ 
sentment as to reject from their society and personal 
contact those who had perpetrated such injuries, was 
it not to be expected that Christ and his followers, in 
whom humanity was an enthusiasm, would regard 
with tenfold indignation the plunderers of the poor, 
and the tempters who waylaid the chastity of men? 

The fact, however, is, that Christ, instead of sanc¬ 
tioning the excommunication of the publican and sin¬ 
ner, openly associated with them. He chose a publi¬ 
can to be among the number of his Apostles, and 
earned for himself from his ill-wishers the invidious 
epithet of the ‘ Friend of publicans and sinners.’ Not, 
indeed, that his intercourse with them could possibly 
be mistaken for a connivance at their immoral courses. 
We may be very sure that he carried his own com¬ 
manding personality into these degraded societies, and 
that the conversations he held in them were upon the 


THE LAW OF MERCY. 


249 


topics he chose, not the topics most usual or most wel¬ 
come there. He himself asserts this in justifying his 
novel course — 4 1 am not come to call the righteous, 
but sinners to repentance 4 They that are whole 
need not a physician , but they that are sick —words 
implying that he appeared among the outcasts as a 
missionary or physician of the soul. If it had been 
otherwise his conduct would indeed have been inex¬ 
plicable, but even so it needs explanation. The paia- 
dox lies in his allowing himself to feel compassion for 
criminals, and in his supposing it possible that their 
crimes could be forgiven. Criminality certainly ap¬ 
peared to Christ more odious and detestable than it 
appeared to his contemporaries. How strange then 
to find him treating it more leniently! Those, it ap¬ 
pears, whose moral sense was moderately strong, who 
hated vice moderately, yet punished it so severely that 
they utterly excluded those who were deeply infected 
with it from their society and their sympathy; he who 
hated it infinitely was, at the same time, the first to 
regard it as venial, to relent towards it, to parley and 
make terms with it. He who thought most seriously 
of the disease held it to be curable, while those who 
thought less seriously of it pronounced it incurable. 
Those who loved their race a little made war to the 
knife against its enemies and oppressors; he who 
loved it so much as to die for it, made overtures of 
peace to them. The half-just judge punished the con¬ 
victed criminal; the thoroughly-just judge offered him 
forgiveness. Perfect justice here appears to take the 
very course which would be taken by injustice. 

It is true that the two extremes do in a manner 


ECCE HOMO. 


350 

meet. Christ, representing the highest humanity, treats 
crime in a manner which superficially resembles the 
treatment of it by those in whom humanity is at the 
lowest stage. He tolerates it in a certain sense, as it 
was tolerated before the institution of law. But the 
other toleration was barbarous, Christ’s toleration is 
the newly-revealed virtue of Mercy. 

In explaining this we must once more recur to the 
fundamental principle that Christianity is natural fel¬ 
low-feeling, or humanity raised to the point of enthu¬ 
siasm. Now, it will be found that where this fellow- 
feeling is dormant, vice is regarded with simple indif¬ 
ference, where it is partially developed, with the anger 
of justice, but where it is developed completely, not 
with fiercer anger, but with Mercy, i. e. pity and dis¬ 
approbation mixed. 

Let us imagine a person devoid of sympathy, a per¬ 
son to whom the welfare of his fellow-creatures is a 
matter of complete indifference. On him a wrong ac¬ 
tion will make no more impression than a right one, 
so long as he is himself affected by neither. He will 
feel neither the indignation of justice, nor the mixed 
indignation and compassion of mercy. Next let us 
imagine a person of limited sympathy. The limita¬ 
tions of sympathy may be of two kinds. The person 
we imagine may sympathize only with certain people, 
as for example his relations, or he may sympathize 
with only moderate ardor. Such a person will feel 
dissatisfaction when wrong is committed (this is the 
instinct of justice) in the latter case always, in the 
former case when the person wronged is of those to 
whom his sympathy extends. But he will not feel 


THE LAW OF MERCY. 


2 5 1 


pity for the criminal mixed with his indignation 
(which is mercy) in the latter case, because his 
moderate sympathy will be neutralized by his indig¬ 
nation, in the former case, because he will not perceive 
the criminality. But suppose a person whose sym¬ 
pathy is unlimited, that is, one who sympathizes 
intensely and with all persons alike: he will feel at 
the same time indignation at a crime, and pity for the 
degradation and immoral condition of the criminal; 
in other words, he will have mercy as well as justice. 

It is to be noted that the word justice is here used 
in the sense of resentment against a criminal, mercy 
in the sense of mixed pity and resentment. Now it 
may in some cases be a man’s duty to punish, and in 
other cases to pardon, but it is in all cases a man’s 
duty to be merciful to a criminal, that is, to mix pity 
for him with the resentment inspired by his deed ; and, 
the words being used in this sense, it may be asserted 
that mercy is not in any way inconsistent with justice, 
but only the riper form of it; in other words, the form 
w r hich justice assumes when the instinct which is the 
source of justice is exceptionally powerful. Now, of 
the ancients, for the most part, it may be said that 
they had not enough justice to have any mercy. Their 
feelings with respect to WTong-doing w'ere almost 
always either those of the perfectly unsympathetic 
man or of the partially sympathetic man. They re¬ 
garded the criminal either with indifference or with 
unmixed indignation. In Christ’s treatment of the 
publicans and sinners we have that ripest humanity, 
that fully developed justice, which w r e call by the 
uame of mercy, and which combines the utmost 


-5 2 


j£CCE HOMO. 


sympathy with the injured party and the utmost sym¬ 
pathy for the offender. 

It may be well to pause a moment on th»* three 
stages in the history of the treatment of crime: the 
stage of barbarous insensibility, the stage of law or 
justice, and that of mercy or humanity. 

We have in the Iliad an interesting record of the 
Stage oi insensibility. In that poem the distinction 
between right and wrong is barely recognized, and 
the division of mankind into the good and the bad is 
not recognized at all. It has often been remarked that 
it contains no villain. The reason of this is not that 
the poet does not represent his characters as doing 
wicked deeds, for, in fact, there is not one among 
them who is not capable of deeds the most atrocious 
and shameful. But the poet does not regard these 
deeds with any strong disapprobation, and the feeling 
of moral indignation which has been so strong in 
later poets was in him so feeble that he is quite 
incapable of hating any of his characters for their 
crimes. He can no more conceive the notion of a 
villain than of an habitually virtuous man. The few 
deeds that he recognizes as wrong, or at least as 
strange and dangerous,—killing a suppliant,* or 
killing a father, j' — he, notwithstanding, conceives all 

* Spuds <3* (KKakfaas Aovirai idAer’, apcpi r’ aAu^ai, 
v6<?(piv aeipaaas, <l>s pit npiapos iSoi vldv ' 
fir/ 6 ptv a^vipcvt] Kpa&ij) %6Xov ovk ipv<rai~o, 
zalSa iSuv, 6’ dpivQdr] ipiAov %rop, 

rai i KdTaKTEiveie , A<6$ 6’ dA.irrjrai itperpds- — xxiv. 582. 3 

+ toi piv iyu> fiovAevaa Karaicrapcv d£ti j^oAku • 
aAA6 rif dOavarwv zavaev %6?.ov, o $ p’ ivl 9vp(p 
Stjpov OrjKC (par iv <ca: dveiSta z 6 A A’ avdpuzuv, 

pi) irarpofovos per ’ 'A^atfiitnv KaAtolp?]v ,— ix. 458.* 


THE LAW OF MERCY. 


-53 


persons alike as capable of perpetrating under the in¬ 
fluence of passion or some heaven-sent bewilderment 
of the understanding. 

But there comes a time, probably coincident with 

the first consolidation of ancestral custom or usa^e 

© 

into written law. when a sense of justice begins to 
diffuse itself through the community. Bv the law 
comes the knowledge of sin. A standard of action is 
set up. which serves to each man both as a rule of life 
for himself and a rule of criticism upon his neighbors. 
Then comes the division of mankind into those who 
habitually conform to this rule and those who violate 
it. into the good and the bad. and feelings soon spring 
up to sanction the classification, feelings of respect for 
the one class and hatred for the other. This new 
hatred of criminals spreads slowly, and is only perhaps 
keenly felt when the crime is vein' heinous. But it is 
unmixed. In this second stage a criminal mav be 
regarded with indifference as in the first. but if he is 
not so regarded then he is simply hated. I: cannot be 
necessary to produce examples of this pitiless hatred 
from classical antiquity: in the Hebrew Psalms, 
which are morally so much in advance of even much 
later Gentile writings, it is sufficiently apparent. 
‘ The man that privily slandereth his neighbor.” says 
David. * him will I destroy and he expresses a hope 
of * soon destroying all that are ungodly in the land.* 
That he does not regard this work of vengeance us a 
painful necessitv imposed on him by his royal office is 
plain from other expressions, e. g. * the righteous shall 
rejoice when he seeth the vengeance, he shall wash 
his footsteps in the blood of the ungodly/ 




ECCE HOMO. 


254 

We may be sure, however, that there was one 
tolerably numerous class of exceptions to this unmixed 
hatred. Natural affection, it has already been re¬ 
marked, was always Christian. We may be sure that 
in the homes of antiquity there were disobedien* - sons, 
to whom the father, urged by the strong instinct 
of nature, was sometimes merciful as well as just. 
Hebrew antiquity presents us with some pathetic 
instances of forgiveness between brothers, and the 
prophets are full of the tenderest expressions of the 
mercy of Jehovah towards his disobedient children. 
It is true that here, in accordance with the concep¬ 
tions of archaic society, it is to the state rather than 
the individual members of it that pardon is offered. 
But doubtless the prophets, who presented so noble 
an image of the Invisible Father, had found in the 
hearts of earthly fathers the mercy they attributed to 
Him, and accordingly it was by family relations that 
Christ taught his disciples and they taught themselves 
to understand tire law of mercy. ‘ How often shall 
my brother offend against me and I forgive him, until 
seven times?’ 4 1 will arise and go to my Father , and 
will say unto him, Father , I have sinned.’ 

While the Gentile nations in their feelings towards 
vice oscillated between the stage of insensibility and 
the stage of hatred, the Jews, who in all such matters 
were more mature, were for the most part in the stage 
of hatred. Among them the division between the 
virtuous and the vicious was most decidedly drawn, 
and the enmity between the two parties most irrecon¬ 
cilable. Let us now consider how such a division 
must work. In the first place, it plainly a fiords a 


THE LAW OF MERCY. 


2 55 


/ 

valuable encouragement to virtuous dispositions. It 
separates the wheat from the chaff, it throws the good 
into the society of the good and saves them from de¬ 
moralizing example and contagion, and, far more than 
all, through this division there arises that which is to 
virtue what air is to life, a tone or fashion of goodness. 
But the bad consequences it produces are scarcely of 
less magnitude than the good ones. These bad conse¬ 
quences are manifold, but the most serious is the effect 
of the system upon the criminal himself. The law 
which condemns sin binds in a most fatal manner the 
sin to the sinner. It exulcerates the sore and makes 
the disease chronic. In the stage of insensibility, 
men, easily tempted into crime, flung off the effects of 
it as easily. Agamemnon, after violating outrageously 
the rights of property, has but to say dcacrdfirjv, 1 My 
mind was bewildered,’ and the excuse is sufficient to 
appease his own conscience, and is accepted by the 
public and even by the injured party himself, who feels 
himself equally liable to such temporary mental per¬ 
plexities. When such a view of sin prevailed no high 
virtue was possible, but at the same time that moral 
degradation was equally unknown which follows the 
loss of self-respect. After the introduction of law 
crime could never again be thus lightly expiated and 
forgotten. By solemn trial and public punishment 
the criminal was made conspicuously visible to his 
fellow-citizens, he was held up to their criticism, and 
it became part of their duty and of their education to 
hate him. For them this was beneficial; but how did 
it operate oi the criminal himself? When the law 
was satisfied and the punishment inflicted, could he 


256 


ECCE HOMO. 


return to his former estimation and rank in the com¬ 
munity? Not so; beyond the legal punishment 
another was inflicted of endless duration and fatal 
severity. He might be condemned to fine or impris¬ 
onment or exile, but in all cases he incurred another 
sentence, in all cases he was condemned to a place 
among the bad, to excommunication from the society 
and league of the virtuous. A fatal prejudice rested 
upon him for the future, a clinging suspicion oppressed 
him ; crime was expected of him ; his virtuous acts 
required explanation; his endeavor after virtue was 
distrusted by the good or passed unobserved by them ; 
he lived among the bad, the bad were now the censors 
of his behavior, to their standard it was most expedi¬ 
ent for him to conform. And as a man’s opinions are 
commonly those of the society in which he lives, the 
criminal accepted in most cases the ignominy as just, 
believed himself to be incapable of virtue, to be made 
for crime, and resolved at last to give the reins to his 
nature. By this process the momentary lapse, the 
human infirmity, from which the best have no ex¬ 
emption, under the dreadful hands of law was con¬ 
verted into an abiding curse. It was, as it were, 
bound to the sinner and became a millstone dragging 
him down to perdition. Justly have great authors 
described sin, deriving its strength from law, as a bur¬ 
den laid upon the back, or, still more graphically, as 
a dead body tied to a living one. 

And when the criminal is the father of children the 
curse descends even upon those who are wholly inno¬ 
cent. Before they are old enough to distinguish right 
and wrong they are, as it were, received into the E\iJ 


THE LAW OF MERCY. 2 57 

Church by infant baptism, their parents or their 
parents’ friends standing sponsors and promising for 
them that which when they come to age they take 
upon themselves but too willingly. Cut off from all 
contact with virtue, instructed in vice, which is itself 
an easy art, and strangers to goodness, which is diffi¬ 
cult to learn, they enter into perdition by a natural 
title, and the same law, which favors so much, as it 
were, the formation of large properties in vice, pro¬ 
vides also that they shall pass by inheritance. 

The sole reign of Law, then, is a despotism, benefi¬ 
cent and necessary at a certain stage of social develop¬ 
ment, but yet terrible, and, if maintained too long, 
mischievous. It is a preparatory discipline destined 
to fit the pupil for another teacher, a proper condition 
for the childhood of society, but not well adapted for 
its maturity. It accomplishes a great work in elevat¬ 
ing men out of the savage levity of primitive manners, 
in delivering them from passions which by indulgence 
had grown to resemble insanity, from the fierceness of 
appetite and anger. It brings out the instinct of sym¬ 
pathy, it develops the power man possesses of identi¬ 
fying himself with his neighbor, and teaches a whole 
community to interest itself in redressing the wrong 
done to one of its members. As has been already re- 
m irked) it is in its nature tender and not cruel, for it 
protects the weak who before were helpless and arms 
itself to avenge the injured. Though Law inflicts 
punishment, yet it exists to reduce the whole amount 
of suffering, and though when tve personify it we call 
it stern and relentless, yet, compared with lawlessness, 
it is soft-hearted. But there comes a time when man* 


258 


ECCE HOMO. 


kind have learned all the lessons which Law has to 
teach and begin to leave their instructor behind them. 
For Law is an esprit borne ,, and does not perceive the 
legitimate consequences of his own principle. Sym¬ 
pathy, the instinct by which men identify themselves 
with their fellow-creatures, should not be partial or 
limited in its activity. Law teaches us to put our¬ 
selves in the place of those who are injured, but does 
not teach us, nay, he forbids us, to put ourselves in 
the place of those who commit injuries. And those 
who have learnt his lesson best, and in whom the 
power of sympathy is most highly trained, will be 
most discontented with his rule, and as to the lawless 
he was a preacher of pity, to these he will justly ap¬ 
pear cruel. Such persons are ripe for that higher 
doctrine which Christ teaches. 

Christ, representing all who are possessed by the 
Enthusiasm of Humanity, does not regard crime with 
less anger, is not less anxious for the punishment of it, 
than the legalists. But when it is punished, when the 
claims of the injured party are satisfied, he does not 
dismiss the matter from his thoughts. He considers 
that the criminal also has claims upon him, claims so 
strong that they are not forfeited by any atrocity of 
crime. Nay, they are rather strengthened by his 
criminality, as they would be by misery, for the hu¬ 
mane man, who finds his own happiness in his 
humanity, does sincerely consider the criminal to be 
miserable. This doctrine that vice is essentially 
pitiable was advanced sometimes in antiquity, but 
plain men flouted it from them with irritation as one 
of those childish paradoxes with which philosophers 


THE LAW OF MERCY. 


259 


amused and abused their leisure, and some of the 
philosophers themselves showed that they only half 
believed it by the self-complacency and affected pre¬ 
ciseness with which they demonstrated it. Neverthe¬ 
less ho in whom humanity is an enthusiasm does 
honestly feel distressed when he thinks of those who 
are fallen and lost in character and whom society re* 
pudiates. Even when wickedness is prosperous and 
flourishes like a green bay tree, he understands pretty 
well and unaffectedly pities the uneasiness of remorse, 
the loneliness of pride, the moral paralysis that suc¬ 
ceeds satiety, the essential poverty of vulgarity. Nor 
does he only feel such pity, but he has the courage to 
indulge it. The legalist, if he is at any time surprised 
into a similar feeling for an unfortunate criminal, sup¬ 
presses it as dangerous and weak. The anger which 
he feels, the punishment which he executes or ap¬ 
proves, is his guarantee against falling back into insen¬ 
sibility. His disapprobation of wrong-doing, being 
not very strong, requires to be anxiously cherished lest 
it should die in him altogether. Any relentings of 
pity would be dangerous to it; he has not sympathy 
enough for both the injured party and the criminal; 
at least any that he might give to the latter must be 
taken from the former. Therefore in communities 
which are in the legal stage, mercy is always identi¬ 
fied with laxity; the stage before them is mistaken for 
the stage behind them ; and any tenderness towards 
criminals —$arum odisse malos cives —is regarded 
as a portentous omen of the downfall of discipline and 
of public ruin. But the moment that sympathy ceases 
to be this invalid thing, needing constant artificial 


ECCE HOMO. 


260 

stimulants, the moment it kindles into the free Enthu¬ 
siasm of Humanity, it gets the confidence to follow its 
own impulses. It perceives the truth of what has been 
explained above, that mercy is no relaxation of justice, 
but justice itself in a riper stage * it is not afraid that 
if it pities criminals it shall have no compassion left to 
bestow on the innocent sufferers from criminality. On 
the contrary, it is confident that if it can pity those with 
whom it is angry and at the very moment when it is 
most angry, and even at the very moment when it is 
inflicting the punishment suggested by a just anger, it 
will be able a foi'tiori to pity and sympathize with 
those who are suffering from no fault of their own. 

Therefore it is that Christ went boldly among the 
publicans and sinners. Virtue, he considered, was not 
now so feebly supported that its soldiers must needs re¬ 
main forever within their intrenched camp. This had 
been necessaiy at an earlier stage of the war. A close 
and exclusive league of the virtuous had been neces¬ 
sary at an earlier time, that they might not forget their 
principles or be overwhelmed by numbers. But good¬ 
ness had now become ten times more powerful in be¬ 
coming an enthusiasm. It no longer contents itself 
with barely preserving its existence in the presence of 
prevailing vice. It turns against its enemy ; it under¬ 
takes to take the hostile army prisoner. The children 
of Israel turn and pursue the Egyptians through the 
Red Sea. Under the command of Christ Jerusalem 
lays siege to Babylon. He announced a great mundane 
project of regeneration. He will not consent to lose 
those who have apostatized from virtue. He will not 
rest content with raising goodness to a higher standard 


THE LAW OF MERCY. 


26l 


m those who are good already, nor with making it 
easier for others to be good in future. He will go in 
search of those who have already fallen; no matter 
how deep their degradation, he will not willingly lose 
one. Besides the title of King, or Son of Man, he as¬ 
sumes that of Savior or Redeemer, and in this woik 
he seems to have his heart even more than in the 
other. The shepherd, he says, leaves without hesita¬ 
tion the ninety-nine sheep to seek the hundredth that 
i3 lost. A woman that has lost a single piece of money 
will sweep the whole house and search diligently till 
she find it. And what pleasure when such a search is 
successful! In heaven among God’s angels, there is 
more joy over one sinner that returns than over ninety 
and nine that never wandered. 


262 


CHAPTER XX. 

THE LAW OF MERCY — continued . 

1 IRIST then undertakes the conversion of sinners. 



Of his success in this enterprise our biographies, 
paiticularly that of St. Luke, contain many examples. 
Christianity, by giving men a greater interest in each 
other than they had before, and by weakening the in¬ 
fluence of artificial distinctions, and, at the same time, 
by its intense seriousness, gave those who were influ¬ 
enced by it a keen eye for character and an insight into 
human nature such as is very rarely found in antiquity. 
The stories of conversion recorded in the Gospels have 
a liveliness and truth which every one can in some 
measure feel, but which are felt ten times as strongly 
by those who know and consider how perfectly new 
to literature such sketches were when they appeared. 
It was by them that the depth and complexity and 
mystery of the human heart were first brought to light, 
and their appearance involved a revolution in litera¬ 
ture, the results of which are to be traced not so much 
in the writers of the long barbaric period which fol- 
lowed their diffusion as in Dante and Shakspeare. Of 
these stories we will find room here for two, the one 
containing the repentance of a man, the other of a 
woman. 

Zacchceus held a high office under the farmers-gen- 


THE LAW OF MERCY. 


263 

eral, and had become rich. His wealth, however, had 
not availed to relax the social excommunication under 
which, with all his fraternity, he lay. Either the Jews 
of that time were less dazzled by wealth than the Gen¬ 
tiles of the present, or they reflected with indignation 
that the riches he had amassed had been plundered 
from themselves. By some means he had heard of 
Christ, and conceived an intense curiosity to see him, 
That it was no vulgar curiosity, but that overpowering 
attraction towards greatness and goodness—that faith , 
which is the germ of all that is good in human charac¬ 
ter— may be gathered from the sequel of the story. 
He may have heard it reported that Christ did not, 
like other religious men, disdain the company of pub¬ 
licans, and that he had condescended to be entertained 
at their houses. He was rich; he also was able, if 
only -such an honor could be granted him, to entertain 
Christ. It is for this that riches are enviable, that 
while the poor must be content with glimpses of the 
hero or the saint as he passes in the street, the rich can 
bring him within their doors and contemplate him at 
ttieir leisure. But Zacchams had not the courage to 
use this privilege of his wealth. His conscience was 
ill at ease, the stigma of his infamous occupation had 
entered into his heart. He was afraid to show Ins 
wealth to Christ, lest the question should be asked him 
how it had been gained. He submitted therefore to 
* look on among the poor, and to be satisfied with what 
he could see as the procession passed. But the crowd 
was dense, and, it may be, found a pleasure in elbow¬ 
ing aside the social tyrant who had thus put himself 
on a level with them. He was short, and saw himself 


264 


ECCE HOMO. 


in danger cf losing even the passing glimpse of Christ’s 
countenance with which he had resolved to be content. 
Determined to secure at least so mud:, he ran forward 
and climbed into a tree which overshadowed the road 
by which the train was to pass. By this means he 
saw Christ, and not only so but Christ saw him. Zac- 
chseus was not one of the most pitiable of his excom¬ 
municated class. He might be hated, but he wag 
successful; he was one of those who might say, 
‘ Popuius me sibilat , at miki plaudo .’ In a word, he 
was a prosperous plunderer, living in abundance 
among the victims of his rapacity. But Christ was 
touched by the enthusiasm he displayed, and may 
have divined and understood the shame which, as we 
have conjectured, caused him to shrink from a per¬ 
sonal interview. Such enthusiasm and shame seemed 
to Christ the first stirrings of humanity in the publi¬ 
can’s heart, and by a single stroke he completed the 
change he perceived to be beginning, and ripened a 
half-hopeless yearning into a settled purpose of moral 
amendment. Without delay, or reserve, or conditions, 
or rebuke, he gave himself up to the publican. Adopt¬ 
ing the royal style which was familiar to him, and 
which commends the loyalty of a vassal in the most 
delicate manner by freely exacting his services, he 
informed Zacchasus of his intention to visit him, and 
signified his pleasure that a banquet should be instantly 
prepared. Such generous confidence put a new* soul 
into Zacchaeus; it snapped in a moment the spell of 
wickedness under which all his better instincts had re¬ 
mained in dull abeyance; and while the crowd mur¬ 
mured at the exceptional honor done to a public enemy. 


THE LAW OF MERCY. 


265 

Zacclueus stood forth, and solemnly devoted half his 
property to the poor, and vowed fourfold restoration 
to all whom he had wronged. 

This is the repentance of a man. Zacchaeus shows 
no remarkable sensibility; he sheds no tears, he utters 
no striking reflections. The movement in his mind is 
si rong, but not in the least peculiar or difficult to fol¬ 
low. It is a conflict between common honesty and 
the instincts of the thief, a conflict in which the former, 
fighting at great odds, gains a signal victory. Against 
all the might of inveterate habit, and bad society, and 
a crushing public prejudice, this man makes head, and 
by one great effort forces his way back into the class 
of good citizens and honest men. And this great but 
simple achievement he gained power to perform, not 
through reflection and reasoning, not through the 
eloquence of a preacher, not through supernatural 
terrors, but through the cordial, restoring influence of 
Mercy. It was Mercy, which is not Pity — a thing 
comparatively weak and vulgar — but Pity and Re¬ 
sentment blended at the highest power of each, the 
most powerful restorative agent known in the medicine 
of the soul; it was Mercy that revealed itself in Christ’s 
words, the Pity slightly veiled under royal grace, the 
Resentment altogether unexpressed and yet not con¬ 
cealed, because already too surely divined and antici¬ 
pated by the roused conscience of the criminal. And 
Mercy, more powerful than Justice, redeemed the 
minimal while it judged him, increased his shame 
tenfold, but increased in the same proportion the wish 
and courage to amend. 

The second story describes the repentance of a 

12 


266 


ECCE HOMO. 


woman. It is a fragment. A woman fallen from 
virtue, we know not who, entered a room in the house 
of a Pharisee who was entertaining Christ. We know 
not particularly what Christ had done for her, but we 
can conclude generally that he had roused her con¬ 
science as he did that of Zacchceus, that he had restored 
her to virtue by giving her hope and by inspiring her 
with an enthusiastic devotion to himself. She threw 
herself down before him and embraced his feet, weep¬ 
ing so abundantly over them that she was obliged to 
wipe them, which she did with her hair. This is the 
picture presented to us, and we know nothing fur¬ 
ther of the woman, although tradition has identified 
her with that Mary Magdalene, of whose touching 
fidelity to Christ in the last scenes of his life so much 
is recorded. But fragmentary as the story is, it is 
all-important, as the turning-point in the history of 
women. Such wisdom is there in humanity that he 
who first looked upon his fellow-creatures with sym¬ 
pathetic eyes found himself, as it were, in another 
world and made mighty discoveries at every step. 
The female sex, in which antiquity saw nothing but 
inferiority, which Plato considered intended to do the 
same things as the male only not so well, was under¬ 
stood for the first time by Christ. His treatment 
brought out its characteristics, its superiorities, its 
peculiar power of gratitude and self-devotion. That 
woman who dried with her hair the feet she had 
bathed in grateful tears has raised her whole sex to a 
higher level. But we are concerned with her not merely 
.is a woman, but as a fallen woman. And it is when 
*ve consider her as such that the prodigious force and 


THE LAW OF MERCY, 267 

originality of Christ’s mercy makes itself felt. For 
it is probably in the case of this particular vice that 
justice ripens the slowest and the seldomest into mercy. 
Most persons in whom the moral sense is very strong 
are, as we have said, merciful; mercy is in general a 
measure of the highest degrees of keenness in the 
moral sense. But there is a limit beyond which it 
seems almost impossible for mercy, properly so called, 
to subsist. There are certain vices which seem to 
indicate a criminality so ingrained, or at least so in¬ 
veterate, that mercy is, as it were, choked in the deadly 
atmosphere that surrounds them, and dies for want of 
that hope upon which alone it can live. Vices that 
are incorrigible are no proper objects of mercy, and 
there are some vices which virtuous people are found 
particularly ready to pronounce incorrigible. Few 
brave men have any pity to spare for a confirmed 
coward. And as cowardice seems to him who has the 
instinct of manliness a fatal vice in man as implying 
an absence of the indispensable condition of masculine 
virtue, so does confirmed unchastity in woman seem a 
fatal vice to those who reverence womanhood. And 
therefore little mercy for it is felt by those who take a 
serious view of sexual relations. There are multitudes 
who think lightly of it, and therefore feel a good deal 
of compassion for those who suffer at the hands of 
society such a terrible punishment for it. There are 
others who can have mercy on it while they contem¬ 
plate it, as it were, at a distance, and do not realize 
how mortal to the very soul of womanhood is the 
habitual desecration of all the sacraments of love. 
Lastly, there are some who force themselves to have 


268 


KCCE HOMO. 


mercy on it out of reverence for the example of Christ. 
But of those who see it near, and whose moral sense 
is keen enough to judge of it, the greater number pro¬ 
nounce it incurable. We know the pitiless cruelty 
With which virtuous women commonly regard it. 
Why is it that in this one case the female sex is more 
hard-hearted than the male? Probably because in this 
cne case it feels more strongly, as might be expected, 
the heinousness of the offence ; and those men who 
criticise women for their cruelty to their fallen sisters 
do not really judge from the advanced stage of mercy 
but from the lower stage of insensibility. It is com¬ 
monly by love itself that men learn the sacredness of 
love. Yet, though Christ never entered the realm of 
sexual love, this sacredness seems to have been felt by 
him far more deeply than by other men. We have 
already had an opportunity of observing this in the 
case of the woman taken in adultery. He exhibited 
on that occasion a profound delicacy of which there is 
no other example in the ancient world, and which 
anticipates and excels all that is noblest in chivalrous 
and finest in modern manners. In his treatment of 
the prostitute, then, how might we expect him to act? 
Not, surely, with the ready tolerance of men, which 
is but laxity; we might expect from him rather the 
severity of women, which is purity. Disgust will 
overpower him here, if anywhere. He will say, 4 Thy 
sin’s not accidental, but a trade. . . . ’T is best 

that thou diest quickly.’ There is no doubt that he 
was not wanting in severity ; the gratitude that washed 
his feet in tears was not inspired by mere good-nature. 
But he found mercy too, where mercy commonly fails 


THE LAW OF MERCY. 


269 

even in the tender hearts of women. And mercy 
triumphed, where it commonly dies of mere despair. 

These two stories may serve as specimens of Christ’s 
redeeming power. At the same time they exhibit to 
us, it is plain, the natural working of the Enthusiasm 
of Humanity, the essential spirit of Christianity. The 
latter stoiy in particular has gone to the heart of 
Christendom. It has given origin and even a name to 
institutions which are found wherever the Christian 
Church is found, and the object of which is to redeem 
women that have fallen from virtue. It has given to 
Christian art the figure of the Magdalen, which, when 
contrasted with the Venus of Greek sculpture, repre¬ 
sents in a very palpable manner the change which 
Christ has wrought in the moral feelings of mankind 
with respect to women. May we then lay it down 
as one of the duties of positive morality to attempt 
the restoration to virtue of the criminal and outcast 
classes ? 

The Christian Church has certainly always reckoned 
this among its duties ; nevertheless there exists at the 
present day among practical men a strong repugnance 
to all schemes of the kind, a repugnance founded on 
observation and experience, and therefore not likely to 
be wholly unreasonable. It will be well worth while 
to state the world’s case against the Christian doctrine 
of repentance. 

In the first place, the world will admit what has 
been said concerning the imperfection of the legal 
system. It is impossible to deny that the habit of 
regarding criminals with unmixed hatred is a per¬ 
nicious one. Law taken by itself benefits the good, 


ECCE HOMO. 


270 

and so tar is> n.Obt useful; but at the same time it 
makes the wa/eiing bud and the bad worse, and vice 
hereditary, and so far it does frightful mischief. Mercy 
thcrefoie must be called in to temper justice, and here 
Christianity is right. In the treatment of the criminal 
vve must consider his interest as well as the interest of 
the injured party. We must anxiously study the best 
means of moderating punishment so as to leave the 
criminal a hope of recovering the public esteem, the 
best means of inflicting a disgrace which shall not be 
indelible. This is a just principle, and Christ’s pro¬ 
test against the pitiless rigor which the Jews exercised 
against the publicans and sinners was right and mem¬ 
orable. If we follow the example he set we may save 
many who under the legal system are lost inevitably. 
We may arrest some at the beginning of a bad career 
whom the legal system would hurry forward. But the 
hope of recovering all, of melting the most hardened, 
is an error of enthusiasm. Men who look facts in the 
face, it is said, recognize that vice when it has onct 
fairly laid hold of a man is an incurable disease, and 
moreover, that it lays hold of men with a fatal rapid¬ 
ity. There is such a thing as repentance, and this 
fact should not be forgotten ; but, on the other hand, ii 
is a mistake to attach very great importance to it, foi 
a practical and valuable repentance is very rare; the 
stage in the criminal’s career in which it is possible is 
a short one, and it is only the less heinous forms of 
criminality which admit of it at all. 

This is probably the view which the most temperate 
of so-called practical men take of repentance when 
they do not allow themselves to be overawed by the 


THE LAW OF MERCY. 


271 

Authority of Christianity 7 . Clearly it is not the view 
of Christ. He is far more hopeful; he believes that 
the most inveterate and enormous criminality may be 
shaken off, and he is so sanguine of the possibility of 
restoring the lost that he avows himself ready to neg¬ 
lect for this enterprise his other task of strengthening 
and developing the virtue of the good. Let us en¬ 
deavor to discover the ground of this difference of 
opinion. 

The popular view, then, is that there are two kinds 
of vice. The one includes whatever we understand 
by infirmities, as faults of temper, or passion. Un¬ 
controlled temper or unbridled passions may lead to 
grave crimes ; still we regard these vices as venial, 
and are at all times ready to believe in the repentance 
and reformation of one addicted to them. The other 
class includes such vices as perfidy, brutality, and 
cowardice ; and of these, for the most part, 4 the world 
will not believe a man repents/ and when it finds the 
Church undertaking to convert such characters and 
boasting of its success, it, whether openly or secretly, 
accuses Christianity of encouraging hypocrisy. Now 
if we consider this classification of vices, or if we ask 
ourselves how the vicious characters we are disposed 
to forgive differ from those to whom we refuse forgive¬ 
ness, we shall find that the one thing which we con¬ 
sider indispensable is good impulses. The man who 
has these may commit any of the crimes to which 
turbulent passions may prompt or feebleness of will 
leave the path open, and yet he will not forfeit our 
sympathy. We shall continue to hope for him, and, 
if he should declare himself repentant and reformed, 


272 


ECCE HOMO. 


we shall not suspect him of insincerity, for we shall 
regard him as one who all along had the root of the 
matter in him. But the cold-blooded, low-minded 
criminal, whose crimes have cost him no struggle and 
no remorse, without ardor in his pulses or blush upon 
his cheek — when such a man abandons evil courses 
we but suspect him of some deeper treachery than 
usual, for we see no soil out of which virtue could 
spring. This is the rough philosophy of common 
life, and in ordinary cases it serves us well enough. 
‘ This wise world of ours is mainly right.’ But the 
question arises, How do these indispensable good 
impulses arise in the mind ? If those who have them 
had them from earliest childhood in the same strength, 
and those who want them have never possessed them 
in any degree, then indeed we must reconcile ourselves 
to the maxim, ‘ Once a villain, always a villain.’ But 
it will be found that the same rule holds of these good 
impulses which holds of all other human endowments, 
namely, that though different men may by nature 
possess them in different degrees, yet all possess them 
in some degree ; and also that they require develop¬ 
ment by external influences. Further, it is possible 
that in the absence of such influences they do not die 
but remain within the man undiscovered and dormant. 
Accordingly, though it is quite true that where virtu¬ 
ous impulses are not active virtue cannot live, yet it is 
by no means certain that where such impulses are not 
active they do not exist, and may not, by the applica¬ 
tion of some influence, be roused into activity. 

But, answers the world, the better impulses do 
tooner or later die of tins torpor. It is true that they 


‘THE LAW OF MERCY. 


273 


do not die at once, and there is a considerable period 
during which repentance is possible. But it never 
lasts longer than youth : this is the flexible and elastic 
time. Upon the young try all your methods of con¬ 
version and regeneration ; but when youth is over, in 
middle age, when physical growth has ceased, when 
life has been explored, when habit has become as 
powerful as nature, when no new idea is welcome and 
few new ideas are intelligible, when a man’s character 
is understood by his neighbors, and any change in his 
conduct would excite their surprise and disturb their 
calculations, when all things concur to produce uni¬ 
formity and to prescribe an unchangeable routine both 
of thought and action, — in this stage moral disease is 
incurable, repentance impossible. 

Again, there is much truth in this. It is an easy 
thing to bring the tears of repentance to the eyes of 
a boy; we see the most striking changes pass upon 
the whole life and mode of thinking of young men; 
but the period of experiments, the novitiate, expires, 
and the vicious habits of middle life resist, for the 
most part, the contagion of virtue and of noble exam¬ 
ples. The power of the ordinary agencies of moral 
restoration which are at work in the world is thus 
limited. But the world will surely admit exceptions 
Agencies have at different times been brought to bear 
which have had a greater power than this, and which 
have roused good impulses in hearts that seemed dead. 
A Whitefield, a Bernard, a Paul — not to say a Christ 
— have certainlv shown that the most confirmed vice 

J 

is not beyond the reach of regenerating influences. 
Inspired nen like these appearing at intervals have 
n * 


274 


ECCE HOMO. 


wrought what may be called moral miracles. Nor is 
it possible to set bounds to the restoring and converting 
power of virtue, when, as it were, it takes fire, when, 
instead of a rule teaching a man to do justice to his 
ne : ghbors, and to benefit them when an occasion pre¬ 
sents itself, it becomes a burning and consuming pas¬ 
sion of benevolence, an energy of self-devotion, an 
aggressive ardor of love. Well! it is this aggressive, 
exceptional virtue that Christ assumes to be employed, 
and that the world leaves out of calculation. Christ 
is consistent here; we have remarked repeatedly that 
he demands an enthusiasm, and it is consistent there¬ 
fore that he should impose tasks to which only an 
enthusiasm is equal. 

Once more, however, the world may answer, Christ 
may be consistent in this, but is he wise? It may be 
true that he does demand an enthusiasm, and that 
such an enthusiasm may be capable of awakening the 
moral sense in hearts in which it seemed dead. But 
if, notwithstanding this demand, only a very few mem¬ 
bers of the Christian Church are capable of the enthu¬ 
siasm, what use in imposing on the whole body a task 
which the vast majority are not qualified to perform ? 
Would it not be well to recognize the fact which we 
cannot alter, and to abstain from demanding from frail 
human nature what human nature cannot render? 
Would it not be well for the Church to impose upon 
its ordinary members only ordinary duties? When 
the Bernard or the Whitefield appears, let her by all 
means find occupation for him. Let her in such cases 
boldly invade the enemy’s country. But in ordinary 
times would it not be well for her to confine herself 


THE LAW OF MERCY. 


2 75 


to more modest and practicable undertakings? There 
is much for her to do even though she should honestly 
confess herself unable to reclaim the lost. She may 
train the young, administer reproof to slight lapses, 
maintain a high standard of virtue, soften manners, 
diffuse enlightenment. Would it not be well for Her 
to adapt her ends to her means? 

No, it would not be well; it Would be fatal to do so , 
and Christ meant what he said, and said what was 
true, when he pronounced the Enthusiasm of Human¬ 
ity to be everything, and the absence of it to be the 
absence of everything. The world understands its 
own routine well enough ; what it does not understand 
is the mode of changing that routine. It has no ap¬ 
preciation of the nature or measure of the power of 
enthusiasm, and on this matter it learns nothing from 
experience, but after every fresh proof of that power 
relapses from its brief astonishment into its old igno¬ 
rance, and commits precisely the same miscalculation 
on the next occasion. The power of enthusiasm is, 
indeed, far from being unlimited ; in some cases it is 
very small. History is full of instances in which it 
has foamed itself away in utter impotence against 
physical obstacles. Painful it is to read, and yet one 
reads again and again, of citizens who have united in 
close league against some proud invader; with enthu¬ 
siastic dependence upon the justice of their cause, the 
invincible force of their patriotism, and the protection 
of Providence, when justice has been found weaker 
than power, and enthusiasm than numbers, and Provi¬ 
dence has coldly taken the side of the stronger bat¬ 
talions But one power enthusiasm has almost without 


276 


ECCE HOMO. 


limit—the power of propagating itself—and it was 
for this that Christ "depended on it. He contemplated 
a Church in which the Enthusiasm of Humanity 
should not be felt by two or three only but widely. 
In whatever heart it might be kindled, he calculated 
that it would pass rapidly into other hearts, and that, 
as it can make its heat felt outside the Church, so it 
would preseive the Church itself from lukewarmness. 
For a lukewarm Church he would not condescend to 
legislate, nor did he regard it as at all inevitable that 
the Church should become lukewarm. He laid it as 
a duty upon the Church to reclaim the lost, because 
he did not think it utopian to suppose that the Church 
might be not in its best members only, but through its 
whole body, inspired by that ardor of humanity that 
can charm away the bad passions of the wildest heart, 
and open to the savage and the outlaw lurking in 
moral wildernesses an entrancing view of the holy 
and tranquil order that broods over the streets and 
palaces of the city of God. 

Nevertheless the stubborn fact remains. Whatever 
may be theoretically possible to the Enthusiasm of 
Humanity, it does not at the present day often rise to 
this energy. We do not, as a matter of fact, often see 
these "wonderful conversions take place ; and when 
they do appear to take place, we have had so much 
experience of the hollowness of such appearances that 
we expect to find in the end the change transitory 01 
else hypocritical; or, if it be genuine, that the convert 
was never a criminal of the deepest dye, but perhaps 
rather unfortunate than guilty. Must we not, then, 
still conclude that Christ has in this instance made a 


THE LAW OF MERCY. 


2 7 ? 


miscalculation, and that if he has not overrated the 
power of Enthusiasm so long as Enthusiasm exists, he 
has at least overrated the probability of its continuing 
long, and underrated the power of the agencies which 
are always at work to damp and quench it ? Instead 
of presuming that the Church would generally be 
under the influence of enthusiasm, ought he not rather 
to have foreseen that it would generally be lukewarm 
and enthusiastic only at rare intervals? The answer 
is, that Christ does not actually seem to have been 
thus sanguine, but he counted the Enthusiasm not 
merely an important but an absolutely essential thing, 
and therefore left no directions as to what should be 
done when it was absent. He did not disguise from 
himself the probability of great seasons of depression 
occurring in the Church, ebbs in the tide of the Enthu¬ 
siasm of Humanity. He spoke of a time when the 
love of many should w r ax cold; he doubted whether 
on his return to the earth he should find faith in it. 
And the Apostles in like manner became sensible that 
their inspiration was liable to intermissions. They 
regard it as possible to grieve the Divinity who re¬ 
sided within them, and even to quench his influence. 
But neither they nor Christ even for a moment sup¬ 
pose that, if he should take his flight, it is possible to 
do without him, or that the sphere of Christian duty is 
to be narrowed to suit the lukewarmness of Christian 
feeling. Christianity is an enthusiasm or it is nothing ; 
and if there sometimes appear in the history of the 
Church instances of a tone which is pure and high 
without being enthusiastic, of a mood of Christian 
feeling which is calmly favorable to virtue without 


27 8 


£CCE HOMO. 


being victorious against vice, it will probably be found 
that all that is respectable in such a mood is but the 
slowly-subsiding movement of an earlier enthusiasm, 
and all that is produced by the lukewarmness of the 
time itself is hypocrisy and corrupt conventionalism. 

/ Christianity, then, would sacrifice its divinity if it 
abandoned its missionary character and became a 
mere educational institution. Surely this Article of 
Conversion is the true articulus sta?itis aut cadentii 
ecclesice. When the power of reclaiming the lost dies 
out of the Church, it ceases to be the Church. It may 
remain a useful institution, though it is most likely to 
become an immoral and mischievous one. Where the 
power remains, there, whatever is wanting, it may 
still be said that ‘ the tabernacle of God is with men.’ 


279 


CHAPTER XXI. 

THE LAW OF RESENTMENT. 

i i~ -s not the fault of the divine virtue of Mercy that 
it is so readily counterfeited by the vice of insensi¬ 
bility'. The difference is indeed vast, but it often does 
not express itself at all in outward deeds. The differ- 
. ence lies in drat indignation at vice which in the mer¬ 
ciful man may often be suppressed, while in the merely 
tolerant man it has no existence. Mercy has been de¬ 
fined above as a feeling of mixed indignation and pity ; 
properly speaking, Mercy is present wherever such a 
feeling is entertained, whether the action dictated by 
the feeling be punishment or forgiveness. There are 
occasions when the wise man who entertains this com¬ 
pound feeling will see fit to indulge the pity and sup- 
j 3 ress the indignation ; there are other occasions when 
he will gratify the indignation and resist the impulses 
of pity. But he is not merciful unless he feels both. 
Thus the man who cannot be angry cannot be mer¬ 
ciful, and we shall be able to assure ourselves that 
that unbounded compassion for sinners which Christ 
showed was really Mercy and not mere tolerance, 
by inquiring whether on other occasions he showed 
himself capable of anger. 

Of the two feelings which go to compose Mercy the 
indignation requires to be satisfied first. The first im- 


28 o 


ECCE HOMO. 


pulse roused by the sight of vice should be the impulse 
of opposition and hostility. To convict it, to detect it, 
to contend with it, to put it down, is the first and in¬ 
dispensable thing. It is indeed a fair object of pity 
even while it remains undetected and prosperous, but 
such pity must be passive and must not dare to ex¬ 
press itself in deeds. It is not mercy but treason 
against justice to relent towards vice so long as it is 
triumphant and insolent. So long, if we may venture 
upon the expression, mercy will be even sterner and 
more unpitying than justice, as the poet felt when he 
wrote 

And (J ! if some strange trance 
The eyelids of thy sterner sister press, 

Seize, Mercy, thou, more terrible, the brand, 

And hurl her thunderbolts with fiercer hand. 

But the moment that indignation begins to be in some 
measure satisfied, pity awakes ; and when indignation 
is satiated then Pity occupies the whole mind of the 
merciful man. We have seen Christ when his feel- ' 
ings were in this latter condition, when he moved 
among that class of criminals upon whom justice had 
in some measure done its work. They were suffering 
the sentence of social excommunication. His indig:- 
nation towards them was not dead but satisfied, and 
therefore in his demeanor few traces of it appear. 
But there must have been in Palestine another class 
of criminals, a class which is found in all countries, 
whose vices are not detected or pass for virtues, and 
who accordingly reap all the advantages and sufier 
none of the penalties of crime. In the presence of 
such a class true Mercy, as we have seen, makes her 


THE LAW OF RESENTMENT. 


28l 


face as a flint, and hardens and stiffens into mere 
Justice. 

We find, then, in Palestine a class of persons towards 
whom Christ’s demeanor was precisely of this kind. 
It was a class not less influential and important than 
might be produced in England by fusing the bar, the 
clergy, and universities and the literary class into one 
vast intellectual order. It is to be remembered that 
with the Jews theology, law, science, and literature 
were but different aspects of one thing, the Divine 
Revelation which had been made to their fathers and 
which was contained for them in the Scriptures of the 
Old Testament supplemented, in the view of the most 
influential party, by a Tradition of equal antiquity and 
authority. As there was but one sort of learning, 
there was but one learned profession, consisting of the 
expounders of this ancient wisdom. At least these 
constituted the one learned profession which had 
much influence at this time, and which could be said 
to deserve the title. The old Aaronic priesthood still 
existed, but it bore the stamp of a ruder age and 
wanted the character and acquirements which con¬ 
ferred influence in an age of books and study. As in 
Greece the priesthood passed into insignificance and 
resigned the task of instructing the people, so far as 
they had ever undertaken it, to the philosophers, so in 
Jud^a they were eclipsed first by the prophets and 
afterwards, when the faith in inspiration began tc die 
out, by the commentators on the old Law. The order 
of Aaron gave place to the order which regarded Ezra 
as its founder; the priest gave place to the Scribe 01 
Lawver. 


z 8 2 


KCCE HOMO. 


At the time when the national institutions of Judaea 
were threatened by the Greek kings of Syria, there 
sprang up a party composed of those who clung most 
fondly to ancient traditions, the object of which was to 
preserve the nation from losing its peculiarity through 
the infection of Greek manners and opinions. They 
bore the name of Pharisees. As the national party 
they found it easy to become popular, and, in spite of 
some opposition and persecution from the Asmonean 
kings, they continued in the time of Christ to exercise 
a commanding influence over the people. It is natural 
to suppose that this party included most of that great 
learned profession just described. A Scribe would 
naturally be a Pharisee, inasmuch as one who devoted 
his life to the study of the Law would naturally be 
zealous in defence of it. Accordingly in the New 
Testament, the Scribes, Lawyers, and Pharisees are 
commonly named together, being in fact partly identi¬ 
cal and altogether congenial in views and interests. 
And they may be considered as composing practically 
one party. 

With the main object which this party had in view 
none can have sympathized more than Christ. None, 
certainly, regarded the ancient revelation with more 
reverence than he; none can have been more unwill¬ 
ing to see the national institutions of the Jews sup¬ 
planted and superseded by the customs of the sur¬ 
rounding nations. It might therefore have been 
expected that Christ would rather take the lead among 
the Scribes and lawyers than set himself in opposition 
to them. And, indeed, it is likely enough that, as 
Socrates passed with the world for a sophist, so Christ 


THE LAW OF RESENTMENT. 


2S3 

was regarded by the people in general as a leading 
Scribe or expounder of the Law. But if we examine 
the character of that great party more closely, we 
6 hall find that they not only differed from Christ but 
were radically opposed to him, and that they were not 
only in spirit unchristian but essentially anti-christian. 
The whole course of this investigation has shown that 
the substance of Christ’s teaching was his doctrine of 
Enthusiasm, or of a present Spirit dictating the right 
course of action and superseding the necessity of par¬ 
ticular rules. Now the doctrine of the Scribes, law¬ 
yers, and Pharisees may be briefly summed up by 
saying that it consisted in the denial of a present 
Spirit, and in the assertion of the paramount necessity 
of particular rules. They believed that the inspiring 
Power which had dwelt with their ancestors and 
made them virtuous was withdrawn, and they com¬ 
piled out of the works of those ancestors an elaborate 
system of rules which might serve them for guidance 
in his absence. In other words, their doctrine and 
Christ’s were precisely contrary to each other. 

Both Christ and the legalist desired to preserve Ju¬ 
daism, but the legalist believed that in order to do this 
it was necessary to adopt a defensive attitude, to throw 
up walls of partition, and as much as possible to iso¬ 
late the Jew from those dangerous influences which 
might otherwise have obliterated his nationality. This 
belief was a confession of the weakness of the Jewish 
principle, a confession that it had ceased to be a match 
for the influences in the midst of which it was placed, 
and it suggested a number of hateful and immoral 
contrivance* for perpetuating the division between 


ECCE HOMO. 


284 

Jew and Gentile. The hatred which the Jews in¬ 
curred from the sunounding nations, the fancy current 
among the Gentiles that Moses had forbidden them to 
show a traveller the way unless he professed their 
own belief, or to direct a thirsty man to the fountain 
unless he were circumcised, had its rise in this odious 
theory of isolation. 

Christ, on the contrary, proposed to preserve Juda- 
ism by putting it upon the offensive, by making it 
universal. And this plan implied his belief in its in¬ 
vincible, heaven-inspired strength. He held that the 
same Divine Power which had originally legislated 
for the Jews was still present, completing his legisla¬ 
tion and annulling whatever in it was outworn by the 
Enthusiasm of Humanity kindled in men’s hearts and 
issuing decrees as authoritative as those of Moses. 
And in this Enthusiasm he confided as powerful 
enough to resist whatever was corrupting in Gentile 
influences and to assimilate what was good. There¬ 
fore, while the legalists provoked the Gentile world to 
that final attack upon the Jewish-nation which de¬ 
prived it of its temple and its country, Christ initiated 
that reconciliation of Jew and Gentile which was seen 
in the early Church. 

Again, both Christ and the legalist devoted them¬ 
selves to the promotion of moral virtue. They agreed 
in thinking everything unimportant in comparison 
with Duty. But the legalist believed that the old 
method by which their ancestors had arrived at a 
knowledge of the requirements of Duty, namely, di¬ 
vine inspiration, was no longer available, and that 
nothing therefore remained but carefully to collect the 


THE LAW OF RESENTMENT. 28S 

results at which their ancestors had arrived by this 
method, to adopt these results as rules, and to observe 
them punctiliously. Devoutly believing that in the 
most trifling matter where action was involved there 
was a right course and a wrong one, and at the same 
time entirely deserted by the instinct or inspiration 
which distinguishes the one from the other, they in¬ 
vented the most frivolous casuistry that has ever been 
known. They overburdened men’s memories and 
perplexed their lives with an endless multitude of 
rules, which sometimes were simply trivial: e. g, 
‘ An egg laid on a festival day may be eaten accord¬ 
ing to the school of Shammai, but the school of Hillel 
says it must not be eaten,’ and at other times were 
immoral, as in the case of the Corban which Christ 
selected for censure. 

Precisely in opposition to this school Christ pro¬ 
claimed that the inspiration which had instructed the 
ancient Jews was not only not withdrawn, but was 
given to his own generation in far greater measure 
than to any previous one. John the Baptist, he said, 
was the greatest of the prophets, and the least of his 
own followers was greater than John. The inspira¬ 
tion of the prophets had revealed to them some of 
their duties, but had left them unenlightened about 
others; an inspiration was now given which should 
illuminate the whole province of moral obligation. 
Casuistry therefore, so far from being important, was 
less needed than ever, and it was so far from being 
necessary to supplement the written Scriptures by a 
traditional law that those written Scriptures them¬ 
selves, though they retained their sacredness and value, 


286 


ECCE HOMO. 


yet ceased henceforth to be, in the strict sense, a bind¬ 
ing law. 

So direct was Christ’s opposition to the legal party. 
The method of promoting moral virtue which he pro¬ 
posed was not regarded by him as merely better than 
the casuistry of his opponents, but as the only method. 
The other method, in his view, could not prod ice 
virtue, though it might sometimes procure the per¬ 
formance of a right deed; it could but destroy in 
men’s minds the very conception of virtue. It could 
issue in nothing but a certain moral pedantry and in 
pride. Therefore he denounced without qualification 
the whole system and the teachers of it. Apologetic 
voices might perhaps have been raised, urging that 
these teachers, if their system was worthless and mis¬ 
chievous, nevertheless did, at least in some cases, the 
best they could, that they were serious and made- 
others serious, and that at the worst any moral teach¬ 
ing was better than none. We do not know how Christ 
would have answered this plea, but we know that he 
suffered no such considerations to mitigate the sternness 
of his condemnation. He who could make allowance 
for the publican and the prostitute made no allowance 
at all for the Pharisee. If we examine the charges 
he makes against them we shall see that he accuses 
them in the first place of downright, undisguised vice. 
He calls them plunderers of the poor, and declares 
that the countless rules which they impose upon 
others they take no trouble to observe themselves. We 
have not the evidence before us which might enable 
us to verify these accusations. All that can be said is 
that those who are constant!}' endeavoring to avoid 


THE LAW OF RESENTMENT. 287 

infinitesimal sins, such as that of eating an egg laid 
on a festival day, are particularly apt to fall into sins 
that are 4 gross as a mountain, open palpable.’ In 
this sense it is true that 4 la petite morale est l’ennemi 
de la grande.* But it is evident that Christ was not 
better pleased with their good deeds than with their 
bad ones. Their good deeds had the nature of impos¬ 
ture, that is, they did not proceed from the motives 
fiom which such deeds naturally spring and from which 
the public suppose them to spring. When these men 
tithed their property' for the service of religion, did 
tliev do so from the ardent feelings which had sug- 
gested the oblations of David in old times? Xo doubt 
the people thought so, but in truth tliev paid tithes 
from a motive which might just as well have prompted 
them to take tithes — respect for a traditional rule. 
When they searched and sifted the Scriptures, fancy¬ 
ing, as Christ said, that in them they had eternal life, 
did they do so because they felt deeply the wisdom 
of the old prophets and legislators? The people, no 
doubt, thought that these diligent students were pos¬ 
sessed with the spirit of what they read, but the truth 
was that they only pored over the ancient scrolls 
because they understood that it was proper to read 
them. Therefore the more they read the less they 
understood, and they paid the same reverence to the 
languid futilities of some purblind commentator as to 
the inspirations of Isaiah. When they lauded the 
ancient prophets and built their sepulchres, was it 
because they were congenial spirits, formed in their 
school and bent upon following in their steps? The 
people thought so, but Christ pronounced with memo- 


288 


ECCE HOMO. 


rable point and truth— what is true of many other 
worshippers of antiquity besides the Pharisees — that 
they were the legitimate representatives of those who 
killed the -prophets, and that they betrayed this by the 
very worship which they paid to their memory. 

Let us linger on this for a moment. It is trite, that 
an original man is persecuted in his lifetime and idol¬ 
ized after his death, but it is a less familiar truth that 
the posthumous idolaters are the legitimate successors 
and representatives of the contemporary persecutors. 
The glory of the original man is this, that he does not 
take his virtues and his views of things at second 
hand, but draws wisdom fresh from nature and from 
the inspiration within him. To the majority in every 
age, that is, to the superficial and the feeble, such 
originality is alarming, perplexing, fatiguing. They 
unite to crush the innovator. But it may be that by 
his own energy and by the assistance of his followers 
he proves too strong for them. Gradually, about the 
close of his career, or, it may be, after it, they are 
compelled to withdraw their opposition and to imitate 
the man whom they had denounced. They are com¬ 
pelled to do that which is most frightful to them, to 
abandon their routine. And then there occurs to them 
a thought which brings inexpressible relief. Out of 
the example of the original man they can make a new 
routine. They may imitate him in everything except 
his originality. For one routine is as easy to pace as 
another. What they dread is the necessity of originat¬ 
ing, the fatigue of being really alive. And thus the 
second half of the original man’s destiny is really 
worse than the first, and his failure is written more 


THE LAW OF RESENTMENT. 289 

legibly in the blind veneration of succeeding ages than 
in the blind hostility of his own. He broke the chains 
by which men were bound ; he threw open to them 
the doors leading into the boundless freedom of nature 
and tiuth. But in the next generation he is idolized 
and nature and truth as much forgotten as ever; if he 
could return to earth he would find that the crowbars 
and files with which he made his way out of the prison- 
house have been forged into the bolts and chains of a 
new prison called by his own name. And who are 
those who idolize his memory? Who are found build¬ 
ing his sepulchre? Precisely the same party which 
resisted his reform ; those who are born for routine 
and can accommodate themselves to everything but 
freedom ; those who in clinging to the wisdom of the 
past suppose they love wisdom but in fact love only 
the past, and love the past only because they hate the 
living present; those, in a word, who set Abraham, 
Isaac, and Jacob in opposition to Christ, and appeal 
to the God of the dead against the God of the living. 

Thus it was that the legal party were actors in every¬ 
thing, winning the reverence of the multitude by false 
pretences, imitating inspired men in everything except 
their inspiration, following motives which did not actu¬ 
ate them but which they supposed ought to acti ate 
them. And as must most infallibly happen to men 
living in such conventionalism, destitute of convictions, 
the healthy play of life artificially suspended, over the 
whole inert stagnation of the soul there grew a scurf 
of feeble corruption ; petty vices, littlenesses, mean¬ 
nesses, were rife within them. They grew conceited, 
pompous, childish. They liked to hear the sound of 
13 


290 


ECCE HOMO. 


their titles, to exaggerate the distinctions of their dress, 
to vedect upon their superiority to other men, to find 
that superiority acknowledged, to be greeted reveren¬ 
tially in public places, to recline on the first couch at 
dinner parties. The virtues to the cultivation of which 
in themselves and others they had devoted their lives 
telused altogether to be cultivated by the methods they 
used, and in the void place of their hearts where 
morality and sanctity, justice and the love of God, 
should have been, there appeared at last nothing to 
mark th'f religious man, nothing, we may suppose, 
except- a little ill-temper, a faint spite against those 
who held wrong opinions, a feeble self-important 
nleasnre in detecting heresy. 

Such was the party which Christ denounced with 
so much passion. It may strike us that however 
corrupt they may have been they could hardly deserve 
to be pronounced worse than publicans and harlots. 
But Christ never went so far as this. He did indeed 
in a parable contrast the prayer of a Pharisee un¬ 
favorably with the prayer of a publican, but it was a 
publican repenting, and the moral of the comparison 
is, ‘Better commit a great sin and be ashamed of it, 
than a smaller one and be proud of it/ And when-he 
said that the very harlots entered the Christian Church 
before the Pharisees, he again meant to charge them 
not with being worse but less corrigible than those 
whose vices were too gross to leave room for self- 
delusion. Still it is plain that he gave way to anger 
far more in addressing Pharisees than in addressing 
publicans and harlots. 

In doing so he only followed the rile laid down 


THE LAW OF RESENTMENT. 29 1 

above. It is not to be supposed that, as a lover of 
men, he felt less pity for those whom he denounced 
when all the world admired them than for those whose 
part he took when all the world disowned them. 
Indeed his most passionate invective closes in that 
singular lamentation over Jerusalem in which the sad¬ 
dest feelings of a sensitive patriot are so inimitably 
blended with the regal sense of personal greatness 
which he continually and with so much unconscious¬ 
ness betrayed. He felt pity as well as anger, but he 
thought the anger had a better right to be expressed. 
The impostors must be first unmasked ; they might be 
forgiven afterwards, if they should abandon their con¬ 
ventionalities. The lover of men is angry to see harm 
done to men. Harm was done by the publican and 
the prostitute, but anger could do no more against 
these than it did already. Men were on their guard 
against them, their power for evil was circumscribed 
as far as it could be, and justice was satisfied by the 
punishment of infamy which had been inflicted upon 
them. But the lover of men, when he contemplated 
the vast and united phalanx of legalists, saw that which 
earned him out of himself with anger and pain. He 
saw the multitude sitting at their feet as learners and 
addressing them with titles of veneration. He saw’ 
those whose lot confined them to the narrow’ cares of 
subsistence, those whose limbs indeed w'ere continu¬ 
ally exercised in handicrafts and their shrewdness in 
trades, but w’hose higher faculties rusted in disuse, and 
those of higher station, upon whom fell larger tasks of 
administration and government but still secular tasks 
overwhelming the mind w’ith details and concealing 


2 92 


ECCE HOMO. 


eternal principles from its view,— he saw all this 
miscellaneous crowd gathering round their revered 
teachers eager for the wisdom and the instruction 
which might save their souls in the all-ingulfing 
vortex of earthly life. He saw that in the hands of 
these teachers were laid the life and salvation of the 
ration, and that from them was certain to pass readily 
into other minds whatever enthusiasm of goodness 
might dwell in their own. He looked for this enthusi¬ 
asm ; doubtless he was prepared to find it immature 
and not altogether that Enthusiasm of Humanity which 
dwelt in himself. He observed these teachers — and 
he found they were mountebanks. Their gestures, 
their costume, were theatrical; their whole life was 
an acted play; the wisdom that came from their lips 
was repeated with more or less fluency, but it had been 
learned by rote ; sometimes it was good, the wisdom 
of Moses or Isaiah, sometimes it was the dotage of 
a Shammai; but, wise or foolish, it came with equal 
emphasis from those who, solely occupied with the 
fretting and the strutting they considered proper to the 
part, declaimed it in the dress of teachers to an admir¬ 
ing audience. And marking this, he considered that 
the power of these men to do mischief was equal to 
or greater than their power to do good. It would be 
1 etter that the Jews should have no teachers of wisdom 
3t all, than that they should have teachers who should 
give them folly under the name of wisdom. Better 
that in the routine of a laborious life they should hear 
of wisdom as a thing more costly than pearls but 
beyond their reach, than that it should seem to be 
brought within their reach and they should discover 


THE I.AW OF RESENTMENT. ^93 

it to be paste. Acknowledged penury of wisdom 
might leave them rich in humility, reveience, and 
faith ; abundance of false wisdom could but make them 
impostors or cynics. If a divine revelation be the first 
of blessings, then the imposture that counteifeits it 
must be by far the greatest of all evils. And if the 
unlucky malefactor who in mere brutality of ignorance 
or narrowness of nature or of culture has wronged his 
neighbor excite our anger, how much deeper should 
be our indignation when intellect and eloquence are 
abused to selfish purposes, when studious leisure and 
learning and thought turn traitors to the cause of 
human well-being, and the wells of a nation’s moral 
life are poisoned? 

This, then, was the class of persons with whom 
Christ was angry, and these were the reasons of his 
anger. But now let us inquire what was the character 
of his anger. We must remember that this is he who 
was called a lamb. He was distinguished from the 
other remarkable characters of antiquity by his gentle¬ 
ness. He introduced into human nature those blended 
and complex feelings which distinguish modern char¬ 
acters from ancient. Now the question may be raised 
whether this complexity of character is not purchased 
at some expense of strength. Ancient valor was well- 
nigh pitiless. Modern soldiers mix pity with tlieii 
valor: have they lost any valor by doing so? In like 
manner, when we are angry with men in these days, 
we are commonly angry with discrimination. We 
make reserves ; we give some credit for good inten¬ 
tions ; we make some allowance for temptations; we 
are sorry to be angry, and do not, like the ancients. 


ECCE HOMO. 


294 

enjoy the passion as if it were wine. The question 
then arises, has the passion of anger grown at all fee¬ 
bler in us? Are we at all emasculated by the com¬ 
plexity of our emotions? To find an answer let us 
look at the great Exemplar of modern characters ; let 
us inquire whether he was feeble in his anger; let us 
consider the wrath of the Lamb. 

The faults of the legal party were such as it is very 
difficult to reprove, because they were of so refined 
and impalpable a character. These men had not been 
guilty for the most part of open crime ; if they had 
done wrong, they had done so probably not without 
some good intention ; if they had deluded others, they 
had deluded themselves first. Christ recognized the 
impalpable, insidious character of their corrupting in¬ 
fluence when he charged his followers to beware of 
the leaven, that is, the infection, of the Pharisees. It 
is difficult to reprove a party like this, without either 
making so many qualifications as to deprive the re¬ 
proof of most of its force, or, on the other hand, com¬ 
mitting an apparent injustice. But Christ’s anger was 
not to be restrained by such considerations. One in¬ 
vective has been preserved, probably on account of the 
concentrated passion of indignation which breathes 
through it, and perhaps also because, more than any¬ 
thing else, it determined the legalists to lay their plct 
against Christ’s life. It makes no qualifications, it says 
not a word about good intentions nor about over¬ 
whelming temptations. Delivered in the presence of 
the multitude, on whose admiration the legalists lived, 
it denounces a succession of woes upon the whole all- 
powerful order, reiterating many times ti e charge of 


1 HE LAW OF RESENTMENT. 


2 95 

imposture, and coupling it with almost every other 
biting reproach that can be imagined. It charges them 
with childish pedantry, with vexatious and grinding 
oppression, and, what was especially severe as ad¬ 
dressed to the learned class, with ignorance and with the 
haired of knowledge. To the men who supposed that 
they monopolized the most infallible rules, the most 
exquisite methods of discovering truth, he says, 4 You 
have taken away the key of knowledge ; you enter not 
in yourselves, and those that were entering in you hin¬ 
der.’ Finally, he calls them children of hell, serpents, 
a brood of vipers, and asks how it is possible for them 
to escape damnation. 

Here, then, w T e see Christ in his attitude of hostility. 
His language itself is not wanting in energy, and it 
derived double emphasis from his position. In his 
political appearance he may be compared to the Grac¬ 
chi. As they assailed a close and selfish ruling order 
by marshalling the people against it, and assuming 
that peculiar position of authorized agitators which the 
Roman constitution offered in the tribunate, so did 
Christ assail the order of legalists. The old Jew r ish 
constitution recognized the claim of the pi'ophet to a 
certain authority. One who, advancing pretensions to 
the prophetic character, succeeded in producing con- 
viclion, so that by a kind of informal but irresistible 
plebiscitum he w r as recognized to be that which he 
professed to be, was thenceforward regarded as a 
moi thpiece of the Invisible King, and held an indefi¬ 
nite but at the same time constitutional authority in 
the land. He was not a mere influence , but, as it 
were, a magistrate, and almost, if he pleased, a die- 


296 


ECCE HOMO, 


tator. This singular institution had, it is true, lain 
dormant for many centuries, not that the Jews had 
ceased to believe in prophets, but that no person had 
succeeded in winning the flebiscitum which conferred 
the prophetic authority. The office was understood 
not to be abolished but simply to be in abeyance. It 
is recorded that Judas Maccabceus when he purified 
the temple reserved some matters until a prophet 
should appear to give directions about them. The 
reign of the prophets had now begun again. John 
the Baptist had received that universal testimony to 
his divine mission which the legalists themselves, with 
all their contempt for the ‘ cursed ’ j^opulace, found it 
impossible to resist. To his authority Christ had suc¬ 
ceeded. When, therefore, he assailed the dominant 
order, he did so as a magistrate, and his act was a po¬ 
litical one. His power was less defined, but it was 
not less real than that of a Roman tribune of the peo¬ 
ple, and in extent it was greater, because it was un¬ 
defined, and because it was perpetual and personal, 
instead of being delegated for the term of a year. 
Acknowledged as a prophet, and making no conceal¬ 
ment of the fact that he regarded himself as a king, 
he must have meant his denunciations of the legal 
party for a mortal defiance. They were the final 
brimming over of the cup of indignation. They made 
all reconciliation between him and them impossible. 

Our biographies tell us that he early foresaw in what 
the quarrel would end. He saw that he was driving 
his opponents to that point that, with their love of 
power and position, they must murder him. His life 
had been tranquil; the times were tranquil. How 


THE LAW OF RESENTMENT. 


2 97 

easy it might have been to lead a useful life, teaching 
men everywhere, setting an example of high aims and 
thoughts, leavening gradually the nation with his mo¬ 
rality and sanctity ! How easy it might have been tc 
procure for himself a long life, which would have been 
full of blessing to mankind, and up to the end to see 
that which was the great wish of the Hebrew patiiot, 
1 peace upon Israel.’ What prevented this happ} r pros¬ 
pect from being realized? Surely, we may think, to 
avoid bloodshed and shocking crimes a Christian would 
sacrifice much. What prevented the prospect from 
being realized? We must answer, Christ himself pre¬ 
vented it, simply because he would not restrain his 
anger. He might have remained silent about the Phar¬ 
isees ; he might have avoided meeting with them or 
talking of them ; he might at least have qualified the 
severity of his reproofs. None of these things would 
he do ; he gave his anger way, and drove his oppo¬ 
nents to that which such men call the ‘ necessity ’ of 
destroying him. 

His resentment did not indeed show itself in action. 
He did not arm his followers against them ; he would 
not probably, had he been placed in a condition to do 
so, have done to them what Elijah did to the prophets 
of Baal at the brook Kishon. Yet it appears that the 
anger he felt would of itself have carried him as far 
as this. Setting forth in a parable his own relation tc 
the legalists, and describing himself, as usual, as a 
king, he concluded with representing the king as say¬ 
ing, ‘ And as for those mine enemies which would not 
that I should reign over them, bring them hither and 
slay them before me .’ 

13* 


ECCE HOMO. 


398 

In this profound resentment he never wavered. It 
is the custom to say that Christ died forgiving his 
enemies. True, no doubt, it is that he held the for¬ 
giveness of private enemies to be among the first of 
duties; and he did forgive the personal insults and 
barbarities that were practised upon him. But the 
legalists, whose crime was against the kingdom of 
God, the nation, and mankind, it does not appear that 
lie ever forgave. The words of forgiveness uttered 
on the Cross refer simply to the Roman soldiers, for 
whom pardon is asked expressly on the ground that 
they do not understand what they are doing. The 
words may even contain distinct allusion to that 
other class of criminals who did know what they 
were doing, and for whom therefore the same prayer 
was not offered. At least this interpretation suggests 
itself to one who endeavors to discover from the ex¬ 
pressions which he dropped what was passing in 
Christ’s mind during the period of his sufferings. For 
those expressions indicate that he was neither thinking 
of his murderers with pity and forgiveness nor yet 
turning his mind to other subjects, but that he was 
brooding over their conduct with bitter indignation. 
To the high priest he replied with a menace, 4 You 
shall see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of 
power.’ To the women that followed weeping as he 
was led to execution he said, 4 Weep not for me, but 
for yourselves and your children. For if they (‘he 
legalists) do these things in the green tree, what snail 
be done in the dry?’ And to Pilate he said (drawing 
precisely the same distinction between the conduct of 
the Romans and that of the Jews which we conjecture 


T 1 IE LAW OF RESENTMENT. 


2 99 


to be implied in the words, ‘ Father, forgive them, for 
they know not what they do’), ‘You would have no 
authority at all against me, were it not given you from 
above: therefore he who delivers me to you has 
greater sin;’ meaning, apparently, ‘I should not be 
amenable to Roman authority at all but for that provi¬ 
dential appointment which has placed the country for 
the time in foreign hands; the greater is the treason 
of him, the chief priest, who hands his countryman 
over to a foreign magistrate.’ These passages seem to 
show that if no forgiveness of his real murderers was 
uttered by Christ, it was not b}^ chance, but because 
he continued to the last to think of them with anger. 

It seemed worth while to discuss this subject at some 
length, lest it should be supposed that Christianity is 
realry the emasculate, sentimental thing it is some¬ 
times represented to be. Because it has had a consid¬ 
erable effect in softening manners, because it has given 
a new prominence and dignity to the female sex, and 
because it has produced great examples of passive 
virtues, Christianity is sometimes represented as averse 
to strong passions, as making men excessively unwill¬ 
ing to inflict pain, as fostering a morbid or at least a 
feminine tenderness. War, for example, and capital 
punishment, are frequently denounced as unchristian , 
because they involve circumstances of horror; and 
when the ardent champions of some great cause have 
declared that they would persevere although it should 
be necessary to lay waste a continent and exterminate 
a nation, the resolution is stigmatized as shocking and 
unchristian. Shocking it may be, but not therefore 

unchristian. The Enthusiasm of Huma/iitv does in- 

•/ 


3 °° 


ECCE HOMO. 


deed destroy a great deal of hatred, but it creates as 
much more. Selfish hatred is indeed chai med away, 
but a not less fiery passion takes its place. Dull ser¬ 
pentine malice dies, but a new unselfish anger begins 
to live. The bitter feelings which so easily spring up 
against those who thwart us, those who compete with 
us, those who surpass us, are destroyed by the Enthu¬ 
siasm of Humanity; but it creates a new bitterness 
which displays itself on occasions where before the 
mind had reposed in a benevolent calm. It creates 
an intolerant anger against all who do wrong to human 
beings, an impatience of selfish enjoyment, a vindictive 
enmity to tyrants and oppressors, a bitterness against 
sophistry, superstition, self-complacent heartless spec¬ 
ulation, an irreconcilable hostility to every form of im¬ 
posture, such as the uninspired, inhumane soul could 
never entertain. And though Christ so understood 
his own special mission as to refrain from all acts of 
hostility or severity towards human beings, yet, in the 
Christian view which connects acts so closely with 
instinctive impulses, an act must be right which is 
dictated by a right impulse, and there will be cases 
w T hen the Christian will hold it his duty to inflict 
pain. 

What is called the Middle Age may be described as 
the period of Christian barbarism ; that is, it was the 
time when genuine Christian impulses were combined 
with the greatest intellectual rudeness. But as im¬ 
pulse is commonly strong where intellect is dormant, 
we may note the working of Christian feeling more 
easily in the Middle Age than in the Modern Time, 
Now it is in the Middle Age that we meet with 


THE LAW OF RESENTMENT 


3 OX 


wars of religion, and with capital punishments for 
speculative error. Intellectually considered both were 
frightful mistakes. The Enthusiasm of Humanity, 
enlightened by a complete view of the facts, would not 
have dictated either. But it was the want of enl iglit- 
enment, not the want of Christian humanity, that 
made it possible for men to commit these mistakes. 
Those Syrian battle-fields where so many Crusaders 
committed 4 their pure souls unto their Captain, Christ ;* 
the image of Christ’s death turned into an ensign of 
battle ; the chalice of the Last Supper giving its name 
to an army; these things may shock, more or less, 
our good sense, but they do not shock, they rather 
refresh and delight, our humanity. These warriors 
wanted Christ’s wisdom, but they had his spirit, his 
divine anger, his zeal for the franchises of the soul. 
Our good sense may be shocked still more when we 
think of the auto da fe. We may well exclaim upon 
the folly of those who could dream of curing intel¬ 
lectual error by intellectual bondage. Our humanity 
itself may be shocked by the greater number of these 
deeds of faith. We may say of the perpetrators of 
them, These are they that kill the prophets ; their zeal 
for truth is feigned ; they are the slaves of spiritual 
pride. But if you could be sure that it was not the 
prophet but the pernicious sophist that burned in the 
fire, and if by reducing his too busy brain to safe and 
orthodox ashes you could destroy his sophistries and 
create in other minds a wholesome fear of sophistry, 
without creating at the same time an unwholesome 
dread of intellectual activity and freedom, then Chris¬ 
tian humanity might look with some satisfaction even 


3° 3 


ECCE HOMO. 


on an auto da fe. At any rate, the ostensible object 
of such horrors was Christian, and the indignation 
which professedly prompts them is also Christian, and 
the assumption they involve, that agonies of pain and 
blood shed in rivers are less evils than the soul spotted 
and bewildered w T ith sin, is most Christian. 


303 


CHAPTER XXII. 

THE LAW OF FORGIVENESS. 

W E have now considered the Christian character 
in many of its aspects. We have seen that the 
Christian is one whose steps are guided by an enthu¬ 
siasm that never leaves him and that does not allow 
him to doubt what he ought to do. We have seen 
that this enthusiasm is that love of man in the ideal of 
man, which in a low degree is natural to all, made 
powerful and ardent by a clearer knowledge of the 
ideal in Christ and by a sense of personal relation to 
Christ. We have seen that the operation of this en¬ 
thusiasm is to make morality positive instead of neg¬ 
ative, a constant endeavor to serve mankind instead 
of an endeavor to avoid injuring them. We have con¬ 
sidered some of the principal kinds' of service to man¬ 
kind which it dictates. Of these the first was philan¬ 
thropy, or an attention to their physical wants and 
happiness. The second was edification, or attention 
to their moral improvement. And when engaged in 
this latter duty we found the enthusiasm assuming 
two special aspects in relation to two peculiar classes 
of men. In the presence of immorality disguised and 
prosperous it exhibited itself in prophetic indignation, 
intolerant, aggressive zeal, vehement reproof. On the 
other hand, in dealing with immorality punished, 1 
pudiated. and outcast, it appeared as Mercy. 


304 


ECCE HOMO. 


The picture of the Christian in his active relations 
to society is complete. So far as society is the passive 
object of his cares, it is in this way that he will deal 
with it. But cases arise in which the initiative is not 
in his hands. It is important to know not merely 
how he will treat others, but also how he will receive 
ethers’ treatment of himself. So long as this treat¬ 
ment is good and benevolent, the Enthusiasm of H i* 
inanity will but make natural gratitude more lively. 
But when it is injurious how will the Christian deal 
with it? 

Now it was on the treatmert of injuries that Christ 
delivered the third of those special commands of which 
mention has been made. The famous sentences of 
the Sermon on the Mount which refer to this subject 
will at once occur to the reader, but there is another 
precept which it is important to bear in mind at the 
same time. In the Sermon on the Mount he bids his 
followers bear with absolute passive tolerance the 
most contumelious injuries. 4 If a man smite thee on 
the one cheek, turn to him the other also,’ &c. But 
the other precept is different: ‘ If thy brother trespass 
against thee, rebuke him, and if he repent forgive 
him.’ Now the difference between these two precepts 
is not slight but substantial. The first distinctly for¬ 
bids resenting an injury, the second as distinctly com¬ 
mands it. The expression, 4 Turn to him the other 
also,’ in the first is evidently selected with care to 
convey an extreme degree of uncomplaining submis¬ 
sion. It is the direct opposite of the phrase. 4 Rebuke 
him,’ which Occurs in the other precept. And that 
by 4 Rebuke him,’ Christ did not mean a faint expos* 


THE LAW OF FORGIVENESS. 305 

tulation, appears from what follows. For he adds: 
1 If your brother will not hear you, bring it before the 
church ; and if he refuse to hear the church, let him 
be to you as a heathen man or a publican ; ’ in other 
words, let him be expelled from the Christian society 
The two precepts, therefore, differ essentially and can¬ 
not be obeyed together. If you adopt the course pre¬ 
scribed in the one you must deviate from that presci ibed 
in the other. 

Nevertheless the two precepts do not necessarily 
contradict each other. Christ may mean to distin¬ 
guish two kinds of injuries, the one of which is to be 
resented and the other to be suffered passively. Or 
he may mean to distinguish two classes of men com¬ 
mitting injuries. Whether either of these two suppo¬ 
sitions be true, and, if so, which, will be considered 
farther on. In the mean while it is to be noted that in 
one respect the two precepts agree; in other words, 
that from these two commands of Christ a general 
Christian law in reference to injuries may be gathered. 
For in both precepts it is implied that every injury 
that can be committed is to be forgiven on certain 
conditions. In the one case we are told that injuries 
are to excite in our minds no resentment at all, that 
cuises are to be requited with blessings, and persecu¬ 
tion with prayers; in the other case we are indeed 
commanded to resent the injury, but at the same time 
we are commanded to accept in all cases the repent¬ 
ance of the offender. 

Now this law that all injuries whatever are to be 
forgiven on certain conditions divides itself, when we 
consider it, into two. For it is necessary to examine 


ECCE HOMO. 


306 

separately the maxim that we are to be prepared, as a 
general rule, to forgive injuries, and the maxim that 
there is no injury so deadly but that it comes under 
this general rule. Let us begin, therefore, by examin¬ 
ing the maxim that injuries as a general rule are to be 
forgiven on certain conditions. 

It has already been remarked as a characteristic of 
Christianity that, while it excites an intense disappro¬ 
bation of wrong-doing, it nevertheless regards wrong¬ 
doing as venial. Criminals that have been regarded 
under much laxer systems with unmixed hatred be¬ 
came under Christianity objects of pity. But it does 
not immediately follow that the injured party himself 
would be required to regard his injurer in that light. 
The relation of the injured party to the criminal is 
peculiar; his feelings are different from those of the 
bystander who has suffered nothing by the crime ; and 
the Enthusiasm, though it moves the bystander to 
mercy, may very possibly produce a different effect 
upon him. In order to discover whether it does so or 
not it is necessary to inquire in what respect the natu¬ 
ral feeling of the injured party himself towards the 
criminal differs from that of the bystander. Now the 
feeling of the bystander or disinterested person to- 
waids crime was examined in an earlier part of this 
treatise. It was there shown that in uncivilized times 
the feeling was pure indifference, but that as men 
advanced in moral culture they acquired a sympathy 
with one another. This sympathy produced the effect 
that whenever a given person was disturbed by any emo¬ 
tions, the bystander who observed him became affected 
by similar emotions. Such sympathetic emotions were 


THE LAW OF FORGIVENESS. 307 

always less powerful than the original ones, but they 
were stronger in proportion to the strength of the sym¬ 
pathy out of which they grew. The resentment which 
a man feels at crime from which he does not personally 
suffer is of this sympathetic kind. It is a reflection 
from the resentment felt by the injured party himself. 
Now we have seen that this sympathetic resentment is 
modified and made less pitiless by Christianity, and 
the question is, could this happen and yet the same 
effect not be produced by the same agent upon the 
orig'nal resentment? Plainly there is one way and 
onl} one way in which this might be. If Christianity 
mitigates sympathetic resentment by diminishing the 
sympathy which is one of its factors, then the mitiga¬ 
tion will not extend to that resentment which is inde¬ 
pendent of sympathy. But we know that, so far from 
this, sympathy is vastly increased by the Christian 
enthusiasm. It follows that sympathetic resentment 
would be vastly increased at the same time, if Chris¬ 
tianity did not also operate, and in a still greater de¬ 
gree, to soften the resentment itself. But if it operates 
upon the resentment itself, it will do so in the injured 
party who is animated by that alone as well as in the 
bystander, and therefore Christianity which enjoins 
mercy to criminals must at the same time enjoin for¬ 
giveness of personal injuries. 

But no such indirect argument is required to show 
that Christianity must needs tend to diminish the sense 
of personal injury. We know that it is easier to for¬ 
give injuries to those whom we love, whether the love 
we feel be that love which is grounded on admiration, 
or that which arises out of the sense of relationship, 


3°8 


ECCE HOMO. 


Now Christianity creates for all mankind a sentiment 
which, though not identical with either of these, yet 
bears a considerable resemblance to them, and can 
hardly fail to operate in the same way. We may be 
sure also that revenge diminishes in proportion as we 
gain the power of going out of ourselves and of con¬ 
ceiving and realizing interests and rights not our own, 
Revenge is the monomania of the isolated and unsjm- 
pathizing heart which intensely grasps the notion of 
personal right and property but for itself alone, and 
for which there is but one being and one self in the 
universe. It cannot therefore but be diminished by 
an enthusiasm which creates a moral universe for the 
soul where before there w r as darkness, which forces it 
to relax its stiff and crabbed tenacity by enlarging its 
sphere, which gives it the softness which comes with 
warmth, which educates it in the wisdom of sympathy 
and the calmness of wisdom. 

But now what is to be the limit of forgiveness? It 
would probably have been allowed by many of the 
ancients that an unforgiving temper was not to be 
commended. They would have said, We are not to 
exact a penalty for every nice offence ; we are to over¬ 
look some things; we are to be blind sometimes. But 
they would have said at the same time, We must be 
careful to keep our self-respect, and to be on a level 
with the world. On the whole, they would have said, 
It is the part of a man fully to requite to his friends 
their benefits and to his enemies their injuries. Christ, 
no doubt, bids men be more generous than this, be 
less meanly solicitous about their personal rights , but 
where does he place the limit? what is the injury for 
which we are to take no apology ? 


THE LAW OF FORGIVENESS. 


309 

Christ said, ‘ If thy brother trespass against thee 
seven times a day, and seven times a day turn again 
to thee saying, I repent, thou shalt forgive him/ Prob¬ 
ably no reader of this passage would doubt that it 
means absolutely to take away all limitations of for¬ 
giveness, and to proclaim that there is no injury, how¬ 
ever deadly, or however frequently repeated, which 
the Christian is not to forgive upon submission made. 
Put to make this doubly sure it is recorded that Peter 
put the question directly to him, whether the seventh 
time was literally to be taken as a limit. The in¬ 
quiry, it is worth while to remark by the way, throws 
a strong light upon the character of the followers 
whom Christ had gathered round him. ‘ Lord, how 
often shall my brother offend against ??te and I forgive 
him? Until seven times?’ There breathes, in the 
first place, through this question a singular earnest¬ 
ness. The use of the first person seems to show that 
Peter was not considering the problem as part of the 
theory of morals. He does not speak in the tone of 
Socrates’ disciples. But he seems to be intently con¬ 
sidering how Christ’s principle of forgiveness can 
practically be worked. He speaks as though he had 
himself suffered an injury and had succeeded more 
than once in forgiving it, and now came to his Master 
to know how long the trial was to last. But, on the 
other hand, the question shows a singular want of the 
power or habit of generalizing. It is the question of 
one who has never been accustomed to think, but who 
guides himself by precepts or texts learned by rote. 
He thinks it presumption to try to understand his 
Master > teaching, and accordingly he inevitably mis- 


ECCE HOMO. 


3 IQ 

understands it. What was delivered as a principle he 
instantly degrades into a rule. He has no power of 
distinguishing the foim of the precept from the sub¬ 
stance ; and therefore being commanded to forgive an 
offending brother even if he should commit seven in¬ 
juries. he proceeds at once to inquire how he shculd 
deal with the eighth. No turn of expression could 
more nicely indicate the process by which those high 
moralities which are the life of the world are converted 
into the conventionalities which are its bane. It is 
also worthy of remark that Christ in his reply refuses 
to abandon the figurative mode of expression. 1 le 
vindicates, as it were, his right to use these forms of 
language, and insists that his followers shall learn to 
understand them, but at the same time he alters the 
figure so far as to remove the particular misunder¬ 
standing into which Peter had fallen. He replied. i I 
solemnly declare to you, not until seven times, but 
until seventy times seven.’ 

Here then is the prohibition of all mortal feuds.. 
Irreconcilable enmities are henceforth forbidden to 
human beings. Mercy to a submissive foe is to be no 
longer an exceptional and admirable reach of human 
goodness, but a plain duty. There may be again con¬ 
tentions upon the earth, wars between state and state, 
feuds between family and family, quarrels between 
man and man, but the war ‘ without treaty and with¬ 
out herald ’ is in the modern world, what it was not 
in the ancient, immoral. Human beings have hence¬ 
forth in all cases a right to terms, a right to quarter. 
However they may trample upon the rights of others, 
they cannot trample upon their own; however thev 


THE LAW OF FORGIVENESS. 311 

may repudiate all human obligations, they cannot can¬ 
cel, though they may change and modify, the obliga¬ 
tions of others to them. 

This is Christ’s most striking innovation in morality. 
It has produced so much impression uj:>on mankind 
that it is commonly regarded as the whole or at least 
the fundamental part of the Christian moral system. 
When a Christian spirit is spoken of, it may be re¬ 
marked that a forgiving spirit is usually meant. But 
there is much more in the Christian system than the 
doctrine of forgiveness, nor does its importance in that 
system consist in its being the fundamental part upon 
which the other parts depend, for it is not this in any 
sense. Its importance lies simply in its being the most 
distinctive feature in the system, and in its characteriz¬ 
ing Christian morality more than any other doctrine of 
it. The other laws which have been considered, the 
law of philanthropy, the law of edification, the law of 
mercy and of moral resentment, though Christianity 
gave a new importance to them, cannot be called 
peculiar to Christianity. They were all in some de¬ 
gree recognized in heathen moralities, and though the 
originality of Christianity in respect to them is very 
veal, yet it does not at once strike the eye and is not 
easy to make clear. But in the law of forgiveness, and 
still more in the law of unlimited forgiveness, a star¬ 
tling shock was given to the prevailing beliefs and 
notions of mankind. And by this law an ineffaceable 
and palpable division has been made between ancient 
and modern morality. The other Christian virtues 
were in a degree familiar to the heathen world ; that 
is to say, they had often been witnessed and when 


ECCE HOMO. 


.U 2 

witnessed they had always excited admiration. As 
duties they had never been recognized, but they had 
been known as the exceptional characteristics of men 
of rare virtue. Now of forgiveness we cannot certainly 
say that it was unknown to the ancients ; under ceitdio 
conditions, no doubt, it was very common among them. 
In domestic and family life, in which all the germs of 
Christian virtue are to be found, it was undoubtedly 
common. Undoubtedly friends fell out and were 
reconciled in antiquity as amongst ourselves. But 
where the only relation between the two parties was 
that of injurer and injured, and the only claim of the 
offender to forgiveness was that he was a human be¬ 
ing, there forgiveness seems not only not to have been 
practised, but not to have been enjoined nor approved. 
People not only did not forgive their enemies, but did 
not wish to do so, nor think better of themselves for 
having done so. That man considered himself for¬ 
tunate who on his deathbed could say, in reviewing 
his past life, that no one had done more good to his 
friends or more mischief to his enemies. This was the 
celebrated felicity of Sulla ; this is the crown of Xeno¬ 
phon’s panegyric on Cyrus the Younger. No one in 
antiquity was more capable of amiable feelings than 
Cicero. Yet so much could he gloat over the mis¬ 
fortunes of an enemy, that in the second year after the 
death of Clodius he dates a letter the 560th day after 
the battle of Bovillaa — that is, the fray in which 
Clodius was killed. This is to be noted not merely 
as an indication of the feeling which Cicero could 
cherish, but of the state of public opinion which could 
permit him, without any sense of degradation, to dis- 


THE LAW OF FORGIVENESS. 313 

play the feeling to a friend. Still more striking is an 
example which may be drawn from the life of Julius 
Caesar. He is eminent in antiquity as one who knew 
how to forgive. It is much to his credit that his exe- 
(ution of Vercingetorix on the occasion of his fourfold 
tir.mph has always been considered a blemish upon 
i.is career. The execution of the conquered geneial 
■/as a regular and important part of the triumphal 
ceremony; there could be no reason, except Caesar’s 
extraordinary clemency, to expect that it would be 
omitted on this occasion. And yet the expectation 
was general.* Why did he disappoint it? There 
was everything to incline his mind to generosity. 
Six years had passed since Vercingetorix had been his 
enemy, six years full of success and glory. Vercinget¬ 
orix had been a chivalrous enemy, and his surrender 
had been made in a manner specially calculated to 
affect the feelings of his conqueror. Cassar had par¬ 
doned multitudes of those who had injured him, of 
those who hated him mortally ; why could he not 
pardon one whose only crime was that he had de¬ 
fended the independence of his country against him? 
Caesar had pardoned many whom it might have been 
expedient to destroy; why could he not pardon one 
by whose death he gained nothing, and by whose 
forgiveness he would have conciliated a nation? The 
answer seems to be that on those days of triumph 
Cxsar gave himself up to the enjoyment of his success, 
that he was determined to drain to the dregs the 
whole intoxicating cup, and that even he could not 

* See Dio Cassius, xl. 41. 

14 


ECCE HOMO. 


3M 

conceive of happiness as perfect unless it were flavored 
with revenge, or victory as complete while his enemy 
breathed. The one man who knew something of the 
pleasures of generosity was yet carried away by the 
universal opinion about the sweetness of vengeance, 
and could imagine no triumph but such as those we 
see represented in Egyptian bass-reliefs, where the vic¬ 
tor’s foot is planted on the necks of his captives, or 
that we read of in the life of the pupil of Aristotle, 
who actually dragged the living body of one of the 
most heroic of his enemies at the tail of his chariot. 

The Roman Triumph with its naked ostentation of 
revenge fairly represents the common feeling of the 
ancients. Nevertheless, forgiveness even of an enemy 
was not unknown to them. They could conceive it, 
and they could feel that there was a divine beauty in 
it, but it seemed to them not merely, like the other 
Christian virtues, more than could be expected of ordi¬ 
nary men, but almost more than could be expected of 
human nature itself, almost superhuman. A passage 
near the close of the Ajax of Sophocles will illustrate 
this. As there was nothing of the antiquarian spirit 
about Greek tragedy, as it probably never occurred to 
Sophocles that the ancient heroes he depicts belonged 
to a less civilized age than his own, but, on the con¬ 
trary, as he conceived them to be better and nobler 
than his contemporaries, we may fairly suppose the 
feelings described in this passage to be of the highest 
standard of the poet’s own nge, the age of Pericles. 
Ulysses, after the death of his enemy Ajax, is de¬ 
scribed as relenting towards him so far as to intercede 
with Agamemnon that his body may be decently 


THE LAW OF FORGIVENESS. 


3*5 


bu.ried, and not be exposed to the beasts and birds. 
This may seem to be no great stretch of generosity. 
But the request is received by Agamemnon with the 
utmost bewilderment and annoyance. ‘ What can you 
mean?’ he says, ‘ do you feel pity for a dead enemy?' 
On the other hand, the friends of Ajax are not less as¬ 
tonished, and break out into rapturous applause, 6 but/ 
says Teucer, 4 I hesitate to allow you to touch the 
grave, lest it should be disagreeable to the dead man/ 
The impression of strangeness which these words, 
Do yoit feel ■pity for a dead enemy? produce upon 
us is a proof of the change which Christianity has 
wrought in manners. A modern dramatist might 
have written the words, if he had been delineating an 
extremely savage character, but Sophocles is doing no 
such thing. He is expressing the natural sentiment 
of an average man. A modern poet, endeavoring to 
do the same thing, hits upon a precisely opposite senti¬ 
ment : — 

Sirs, pass we on, 

And let the bodies follow us on biers. 

Wolf of the weald and yellow-footed kite, 

Enough is spread for you of meaner prey. 

And that the change of feeling indicated by this differ¬ 
ence of language has really taken jdace is not to be 
disproved by special instances of atrocious malignity, 
however numerous, which may be quoted from mod¬ 
ern history, nor yet by the fact that the duel is a pecu¬ 
liarly modern institution. That there have been and 
are revengeful men proves nothing, but it proves much 
that such characters are now remarked as exceptions 
and excite always dislike, in extreme cases horror and 


316 


ECCE HOMO. 


disgust. In antiquity they were, as a rule, not disap¬ 
proved, but in the extreme case they incurred censure 
of the same gentle kind as we pass on those who push 
any good or natural feeling to extravagance. The duel 
is, no doubt, at first sight a startling phenomenon. It 
seems bold to assert that the moderns are more forgiv¬ 
ing than the i ncients, when it is certain that in anti¬ 
quity the grossest personal insults were constantly 
overlooked, and that we find a Cicero holding amica¬ 
ble intercourse with men whom he had assailed in 
public with venomous personal abuse, whereas fifty 
years ago a man was held disgraced who did not wash 
out an insult in blood. When we remember this it 
may seem more correct to say that the modern spirit 
has consecrated revenge and made it into a duty, than 
to say that it has adopted Christ’s law of forgiveness. 

And, indeed, it is impossible to deny that the duel is 
an example of the failure of Christianity. It is a bar¬ 
baric usage, which may be traced distinctly to a bar¬ 
baric origin, and which is entirely opposed to Christ’s 
law. Assuredly if a Paul or a John could have wit¬ 
nessed two Christians facing each other with loaded 
pistols to avenge a hasty word, they would have called 
for the crack of doom to end all. And yet it is a usage 
which prevailed through all Christian countries at a 
very recent period. Barbarism in this instance pre¬ 
vailed signally over Christian influences. Further, it 
is not to be denied that the spirit of revenge entered 
into this usage. Nevertheless if we compare in our 
imaginations the duellist of modern times with the 
Agamemnon of Sophocles insulting the corpse of hi* 
dead enemy, or with the Ajax of the same pitortur 


THE LAW OF FORGIVENESS. 31 7 

mg in his tent the ram he supposes to be Ulysses, we 
shall perceive a vast difference between the two, and 
shall remain convinced, in spite cf all adverse appear¬ 
ances, that the spirit of revenge, if not expelled from 
human life, has been at least dethroned and fettered by 
Christ. The revenge described by Sophocles is un¬ 
mixed hatred and spite. It delights in mischief as 
mischief; it is intent upon its prey as a vulture upon 
a carcass; it feasts upon the misery of its object as 
upon delicious food. The feelings of the duellist may 
in exceptional cases have been similar, but in ordinary 
cases they were totally different. And it was only be¬ 
cause they were assumed to be totally different that the 
usage was approved by society. Into these feelings 
revenge scarcely entered at all. Often, instead of 
wishing the destruction of his enemy, he rather desired 
him to escape. Even if the enmity was mortal, at 
least he only wished for his destruction, not that he 
might suffer as much misery as possible. What he 
desired principally was first to show that he possessed 
the courage to expose himself to danger, next, to show 
that he possessed that sense of personal dignity which 
could not put up with insult, and that resolution which 
misrht save him from the risk of insult in future. And 
it was for the sense of personal honor which it was 
supposed to keep alive in men, and for the value which 
it gave to courage, that the duel was long maintained 
and defended by society. The usage, then, was not a 
consecration of revenge, but of the principle of self- 
respect. Doubtless public opinion approved also of a 
moderate gratification of revenge, but assuredly a re¬ 
morseless spirit was no more approved 01 admired b) 


3 lS 


ECCE HOMO. 


those who approved of duels than by others, and wa9 
only even excused in the case of an extreme and intol¬ 
erable injury. 

We may therefore maintain that the general princi¬ 
ple of the forgiveness of injuries, as announced by 
Christ, has been accepted by the world, has become 
part of morality, and has made a great and peiceptible 
difference in the average of human characters. The 
principle of unlimited forgiveness, even on condition 
of repentance, remains, no doubt, to a certain extent a 
stumbling-block. Few of us even profess that there 
are no injuries which we are not prepared to forgive ; 
probably few of us wish to have the forgiving spirit in 
this perfection. It is not merely that such unlimited 
forgiveness is almost impossible to practise; men do 
not merely regard it as an unattainable virtue, but 
they deny it to be a virtue at all. Not under the influ¬ 
ence of strong passion, but deliberately, they regard it 
as a mark of servility and suspect it of being insepara¬ 
ble from creeping vices. Modern literature is full of 
the evidences of this feeling. Shakspeare sa}'s, — 

Swear priests, and cowards, and men cautelous, 

Old feeble carrions, and such suffering souls 
That welcome wrongs; unto bad causes swear 
Such creatures as men doubt; 

and a modern novelist makes one of his characters sav, 
‘ There are some wrongs that no one ought to forgive, 
and I shall be a villain on the day I shake that man’s 
hand.’ It is therefore a plausible opinion that man. 
kind have accepted half of the Christian doctrine of 
forgiveness and rejected the other half, that they have 


THE LAW OF FORGIVENESS. 319 

consented to forgive, but not all injuries, not until 
seventy times seven. 

Nevertheless this opinion will not bear examination. 
It will be found that men do approve and admire un¬ 
limited forgiveness provided it be certainly sincere, 
and that they would themselves think it right to accept 
repentance of the most extreme injury, provided the 
penitence were certainly sincere. But in most prac¬ 
tical cases that arise both repentance and forgiveness 
lie under the suspicion of being spurious. There is a 
manifest temptation on the part of the offender to feign 
repentance ; it is his natural expedient for averting 
punishment. Repentance therefore is very extensively 
counterfeited, and there has arisen a prejudice against 
the name which is easily confounded with a prejudice 
against the thing. The thing repentance all would 
agree is good, but then it is rare ; for the name repent¬ 
ance people generally have slight respect because it 
seldom represents the thing. And the suspicion 
attaching to professions of re£)entance increases with 
the heinousness of the injury. It is a common be¬ 
lief that a person capable of committing atrocious 
wrong must be incapable of repenting of it, and 
such a person’s professions are accordingly con¬ 
temptuous^ disregarded. When therefore people 
deliberately consider it mean to forgive extreme in¬ 
juries the;y are really setting a limit not to the duty of 
forgiveness but to the possibility of genuine repentance. 
The words, ‘ I shall be a villain on the day that I shake 
that man’s hand,’ do not mean that the wrong done 
has 1 een too great to be forgiven with honcr, but that 


3 2 ° 


ECCE HOMO. 


it implies a criminality inconsistent with penitence. 
The words, ‘ There are some injuries that no on6 
ought to forgive,’ mean really, There are some injuries 
of which it is impossible to repent. In the same 
way the contempt with which we often regard those 
who forgive injuries does not really imply any dislike 
of the principle of forgiveness itself, but only a sus¬ 
picion that in the particular case the forgiveness was 
not genuine. For forgiveness is a thing not less liable 
to be counterfeited than repentance. When we were 
considering the virtue of Mercy we remarked that the 
acts which it dictates are often precisely those which 
would be suggested by mere laxity or indifference to 
wrong. Just so forgiveness acts in the same way as 
mere servility. The bystander therefore may easil}’ 
have a difficulty in distinguishing them, and, as for¬ 
giveness, like all high virtues, is rare, and servility, 
like all low vices, common, the chances are in any 
given case that the act which might have been dictated 
by either was actually dictated by the latter. When 
the wrong forgiven is exceptionally heinous this prob¬ 
ability becomes still greater, and so men form a habit 
of regarding the forgiveness of extreme injuries as a 
contemptible thing except in those cases where their 
previous knowledge of the person who forgives makes 
it impossible to suspect him of servility". In such 
cases they betray their genuine approbation of the 
principle of unlimited forgiveness by enthusiastic 
admiration. 

A few cases of forgiveness will yet remain which 
we can scarcely help regarding with repugnance eveu 


THE LAW OF FORGIVENESS. J 2 I 

though we have no antecedent reason to suspect ser¬ 
vility. Othello is certainly not wanting in manly spirit, 
yet we should despise and almost detest him if he for¬ 
gave Iago. But this, again, does not prove that for¬ 
giveness itself is in any circumstances shocking to us. 
What it proves is that circumstances maybe imagined 
of injury so extreme and malignant that the difficulty 
of forgiveness becomes incalculable, and that any other 
way of accounting for the injured man’s abstinence 
from revenge, however improbable and almost im¬ 
possible in itself, becomes easier to conceive than that 
he could be capable of sincere forgiveness. But every 
virtue, and not forgiveness only, becomes in certain 
cases impossible to human infirmity. Every virtue in 
the extreme limit becomes confounded with some vice, 
and the only peculiarity in the case of this virtue is 
that the vice which counterfeits it is peculiarly con¬ 
temptible. 

To sum up: the forgiveness of injuries, which was 
regarded in the ancient world as a virtue indeed but 
an almost impossible one, appears to the moderns in 
ordinary cases a plain duty; and whereas the ancients 
regarded with admiration the man who practised it, 
♦he moderns regard with dislike the man who does 
not. Where the injury forgiven is extreme the mod¬ 
erns regard the man who forgives as the ancients 
regarded the man who forgave an ordinary injury, 
that is, with extreme admiration, provided they are 
convinced of the genuineness of the forgiveness. On 
the whole, therefore, it appears that a new virtue has 
been introduced into human life. Not only has it 

14* 


322 


ECCE HOMO. 


been inculcated, but it has passed so completely into 
the number of recognized and indispensable virtues, 
that every one in some degree practises it, and that by 
not practising it men incur odium and loss of charac¬ 
ter. To the other great changes wrought in men’s 
minds by Christ this is now to be added, the most 
signal and beneficent, if not the greatest, of all. It is 
here especially that Christianity coincides with civili¬ 
zation. Revenge is the badge of barbarism; civil 
society imposes conditions and limitations upon it, 
demands that not more than an eye shall be exacted 
for an eye, not more than a tooth for a tooth, then 
takes revenge out of the hand of the injured party and 
gives it to authorized public avengers, called kings or 
judges. A gentler spirit springs up, and the perpetual 
bandying of insult and wrong, the web * of murder¬ 
ous feuds at which the barbarian sits all his life 
weaving and which he bequeaths to his children, 
gives place to more tranquil pursuits. Revenge be¬ 
gins to be only one out of many occupations of life, 
not its main business. In this stage it becomes for 
the first time conceivable that there may be a certain 
dignity and beauty in refraining from revenge. So 
far could ordinary influences advance men. They 
were carried forward another long stage by a sudden 
divine impulse followed by a powerful word. Not 
the Enthusiasm of Humanity alone, not the great 
sentences of the Sermon on the Mount alone, but both 

* . . . . oiu5* fiiuv avaoaj/xcv, oTaiv a pa Zti>s 
Ik vt6rt]Tos edwKe Kai ds yrjpas rokvntbuv 
ipyakiovs TuMfxovf.b 


THE LAW OF FORGIVENESS. 


3 2 3 


together, the creative meeting of the Spirit and the 
Word, brought to life the new virtue of forgiveness. 
To paraphrase the ancient Hebrew language, the 
Spiiit of Christ brooded upon the face of the waters, 
and Christ said, Let there be forgiveness and there 
was forgiveness 


324 


CHAPTER XXIII. 

THE LAW OF FORGIVENESS — continued. 

B UT up to this point in considering Christ’s princb 
pie of forgiveness we have disregarded entirely 
the words in which he proclaims it. That we should 
be prepared to forgive all injuries upon condition of 
repentance is involved in those words, but they contain 
much more. It has been remarked that the two texts 
which refer to the subject of injuries coincide to this 
extent, but that from this point they differ irreconcila¬ 
bly. Having considered that in which they agree, it 
is time for us to discuss that in which they differ. 

The one text commands the Christian, if a brother 
trespass against him, to rebuke the offender. The 
other gives a directly contrary precept, i If a man 
smite thee on the one cheek, turn to him the other 
also.’ This apparent contradiction will be removed 
if it can be shown that Christ was not contemplating 
the same class of injurers in the two cases. Now, if 
we examine the first passage, we immediately discover 
that the injurer referred to is a Christian. In the first 
place, he is called a brother, which we know to have 
been the term adopted by the first Christians in speak¬ 
ing of each other. In the second place, the text goes 
on to direct that if the offender do not listen to the 
rebuke, the matter be brought before the Church, and 


THE LAW OF FORGIVENESS. 325 

that if he continue contumacious he be treated for the 
future as a heathen, in which it is of course implied 
that at the beginning he had been a Christian. So 
much then being certain, it is natural to conclude that 
the other text which gives a different direction refers 
to injuries received from heathens. Let us examine 
whether this conjecture is confirmed by the expres¬ 
sions used in the passage itself. 

That passage (Matt. v. 38-48) divides itself into two 
parts — one which tells us what feelings we ought to 
entertain towards those who injure us, the other w r hich 
tells us what we ought to do to them. Now in the 
first part * there is nothing which, after what has been 
said above, requires any explanation. It forbids us to 
hate the injurer. It directs us to continue well-dis¬ 
posed to him and to follow the example of Almighty 
God, who does not at once interdict the sinner aqua et 
igni and leave him to perish, but continues to him and 
to the land he tills the blessings of sunlight and rain. 
As a matter of course, Christianity must speak in this 
strain. The Christian is a man not indifferent to his 
fellow-men, but regarding them as such with an en¬ 
thusiastic kindliness. If he were indifferent to them 
originally, his feelings towards each individual would 
be determined entirely by the behavior of the individ¬ 
ual to him. He would love those who benefited him 
and hate those w r ho did him hurt. But as he starts 
from love, it is not to be supposed that injury would 
excite hatred in him. It might indeed diminish his 
lcve, but Christ expresses the intense and ideal char* 


* Which, however, stands second in St. Matthew (v. 43- 48). 


ECCE ±lOMO. 


326 

acter of the love he enjoins and inspires by declai ing 
that it must not have even this effect. 

But because we are not to hate an enemy, it does 
not immediately follow that we are not to take ven¬ 
geance upon him. The infliction of pain and damage 
is quite consistent with love, as we all acknowledge in 
the instance of a parent punishing a child. In fact, if 
Christ had said no more than this we should rather 
have gathered that he approved of the requital of in¬ 
juries. For he bids us imitate Almighty God, who 
though He does not withdraw from sinners the rain 
and sunlight, yet most assuredly, as Christ held, pun¬ 
ishes them. If we are to imitate Him in our treatment 
of injuries, then we ought to remember not only that 
His tender mercies are over all His works, but also 
that 4 God is jealous, and the Lord .revengeth; the 
Lord revengeth and is furious.* 

So far, then, this passage is in no way inconsistent 
with that other in which we are directed to rebuke 
one who wrongs us, nor is there anything in it which 
strongly suggests that Christ was thinking of one par¬ 
ticular class of offenders more than another. The rule 
that we are to love those who injure us is no doubt ab¬ 
solutely universal, whatever course of action we adopt 
in reference to the injury. But when the same pas¬ 
sage tells us how we are to act — when it directs us 
to endure the most outrageous insults without a mui • 
rnur of complaint or expostulation, to offer the left 
cheek to him who smites us on the right, to offer the 
cloak to him who takes away the coat — is this rule 
equally universal, or is there anything to indicate that 
the oppressor is to be understood to be a heathen? 


THE LAW OF FORGIVENESS. 


327 


It may seem impossible to limit one part of the pas* 
sage without at the same time limiting the other. But 
if Christ’s thoughts were intent upon the question in 
what way his followers were to conduct themselves 
towards the heathen world in the midst of which they 
lived, so that the other question, how they weie to 
conduct themselves towards each other, did not at the 
time occur to his mind, nothing is more natural than 
that he should in the same breath have delivered rules 
applicable only to the case in hand and other rules 
equally applicable to it, but applicable to other cases as 
well. Now if we read the first chapter of the Sermon 
on the Mount connectedly, we shall see that he actually 
was occupied with this question, and that, though 
heathen are not expressly mentioned, the Christian is 
always supposed to be dealing with them. Christ, in 
short, has given here a manual of the behavior he re¬ 
quires from his followers towards those who are not his 
followers. For example, they are to consider them¬ 
selves happy when men (i. e. heathen men) revile and 
persecute them. They are to consider themselves as 
lights in the world, that is, as illuminating the darkness 
of heathenism ; they are to be the salt of the earth, that 
is, their Christian enthusiasm is to give a tone to the 
languid and lifeless heathen society. And in the pas¬ 
sage itself with which we are dealing, it is sufficiently 
apparent that the injuries supposed are not those to 
which in the intercourse of life every one alike is 
liable; the blow on the cheek, the spiteful treatment, 
the persecution, point to the insults and cruelties 
which a hated and despised sect had to expect from 
the outer world. 


3 25 


ECCE HOMO. 


Add to this the word enemy. It may not strike 11s 
at first in reading the passage that this cannot possibly 
apply to a fellow-Christian. That there are enmities 
and hatreds between Christians is to us a familiar 
fact; we find nothing very strange in the thought of 
one Christian striking another on the cheek. But we 
must be careful not to antedate this sad knowledge. 
It is inconceivable that in the very act of founding a 
society of brothers sworn to mutual love, in the very 
freshness of Christian feeling, Christ should have 
supposed the existence of savage enmities in the very 
bosom of the Church, and should have commanded 
them to be tolerated. Such gloomy foresight is not 
characteristic of the Sermon on the Mount. On the 
contrary, there breathes through it more of that ardor 
which realizes a distant ideal, and overlooks inter¬ 
mediate difficulties, than appears in any other dis¬ 
course of Christ. It is tire first, the simplest, the 
largest utterance of the new Law, the most inspired 
expression of the civilization of the modern world, the 
fundamental document of ripe morality. It inaugurated 
a golden age of reconciliation and union. It is the 
earliest and softest note of that heavenly Dove which 
has built its nest among men, and which, though often 
scared away for a time, has still returned. True in¬ 
deed it is, that the actual reconciliation of mankind 
was further off than might at that time have seemed. 
True that Christ on other occasions recognized this 
with a strange sagacity and certainty. Still, nothing 
is so incredible as that he should have countenanced 
or tolerated in thought so complete an obliteration of 
the distinction between the Church and the surround 


THE LAW OF FORGIVENESS. 


ing world as might make it possible to apply to the 
same person the terms ‘enemy’ and ‘ fellow'-Chris- 
tian.’ 

If, then, we take it for proved that the directions 
contained in this passage refer only to the case of in¬ 
juries inflicted by heathens, we arrive at this remarka¬ 
ble conclusion, that Christ held such injuries to stand 
on a materially different footing from those committed 
by Christians. We have seen that in all cases what¬ 
ever he commanded his followers to be ready to for¬ 
give on condition of repentance. But he commands 
them, when dealing with a brother Christian, firmly 
to exact that repentance, not to pass the injury by, not 
even to rest content with a rebuke, unless the rebuke 
accomplish its purpose, but to bring the matter before 
the Church and prosecute it until the offender make 
submission. On the other hand, when they are deal¬ 
ing with a heathen, they are to bear themselves quite 
differently. They are to compose themselves to an 
absolute passive tolerance, and to bear in silence what¬ 
ever may be inflicted. And this is no mere political 
contrivance for carrying a helpless sect through times 
of persecution. Christians are not to tolerate injuries 
simply because, in the presence of superior force 
nothing w r ould be gained by resenting them. Theij 
tolerance is not to be reluctant or sullen, nor is it to- 
be a stoical indifference. They are to think of their 
oppressors with positive good-will; they are to requite 
curses not with silence, much less with silent con¬ 
tempt, but with blessings, and malice not with indif¬ 
ference but with acts of kindness. Now w r hat is the 
ground of this distinction? What so great difference 


33° 


ECCE HOMO. 


is there between the Christian and the heathen that 
they should be treated so differently? Several times 
in this treatise we have had occasion to mark the 
essential difference between a Christian and a heathen. 
We have found it to depend upon that universal rela¬ 
tion of every man to every other man beyond the 
special relation of kindred which Christians recognize 
and heathens do not. It is on this universal relation 
of human beings to each other that the Church is 
founded. And it must be understood that they con¬ 
ceived this relation to be antecedent to the foundation 
of the Church and altogether independent of it. Chris¬ 
tians did not regard each other as brothers because 
they were alike members of the Church, but they be¬ 
came members of the Church because they regarded 
each other as brothers. Therefore they cherished the 
same feeling towards those who were not members of 
the Church and who did not reciprocate the feeling. 
On the other hand, the heathen, as such, recognized 
only special obligations towards particular classes of 
men, his relations or fellow T -citizens. If he recognized 
any wider obligations, they were formal obligations 
created by positive legal enactment and resting, in 
his view, on no essential justice. In the heathen 
theory the relation of men towards each other, wdiere 
no tie of nature or of treaty had bound them together, 
was that of enemies. They were rival claimants of 
the earth’s wealth ; their interests were supposed to be 
conflicting; and therefore their natural condition was 
hostility. 

This being so, an injury committed by a heathen 
must have been essentially different from an injury 


THE LAW OF FORGIVENESS. 331 

committed by a Christian. Both alike were violations 
of obligation, but the latter was a conscious, the for¬ 
mer an unconscious violation. They differed as much 
as homicide committed in war upon an enemy differs 
from homicide committed in peace upon a fellow- 
citizen. The heathen injured one whom he con¬ 
ceived to be his enemy by a law of nature and to be 
prepared at any moment to perpetrate a similar injury 
upon himself. But an injury committed by a Chris¬ 
tian was like one of those breaches of the right of 
hospitality or of the right of a suppliant from which 
even barbarians shrank; it was the violation of a 
solemn compact. It was reasonable, therefore, that 
the two classes of injuries should be dealt with in a 
very different way. The injurious Christian was a 
proper subject of resentment. But it was unreasona¬ 
ble to be angry with the injurious heathen. Anger, 
where it is healthy and justifiable, is the feeling ex¬ 
cited in us by wrong, by laws broken, covenants dis¬ 
regarded. The heathen as such broke no law and 
disregarded no covenant, for he knew of none. He 
might be noxious and mischievous, but he could not, 
in the strict sense of the word, be injurious. It might 
most necessary to inform him of the obligation he 
neglected, but it was impossible to be angry with him 
for neglecting it. 

This description of the heathen would be justly 
chaiged with exaggeration if it professed to describe 
the ordinary or average heathen. But what it pro¬ 
fesses to describe is the ideal heathen, or the heathen 
as he would have been had he lived consistently with 
his theory. Doubtless this is as much an abstraction 


332 


ECCE HOMO. 


as a mathematical point or line. No person perfectly 
heathen probably ever existed. The indiv idual heathen 
excelled his own moral system as much as the individual 
Christian falls short of his. Natural kindness was in 
every one a kind of substitute for Christianity. Still it 
is not easy to overestimate the hardening effect of an 
antisocial theory of life which, besides seconding all 
selfish instincts, did not appear to those who held it 
a theory but a truth too obvious, too universally held, 
consecrated too much by usage, to admit of being 
questioned. We may imagine the almost irresistible 
force of this universal prejudice upon minds which 
had never heard it called in question, if we remark 
the difficulty which most men feel at the present day 
in viewing otherwise than as the wildest of para¬ 
doxes the proposition that the happiness of the brute 
creation deserves a moment’s consideration when com¬ 
pared with the convenience or profit of human beings. 
If a similar insensibility to human sufferings compared 
with personal convenience reigned with equal domin¬ 
ion in the minds of the ancients, if their virtues ex¬ 
tended no farther than the family and the state, if they 
‘ loved their brethren only, it was quite reasonable 
that the Christians should take account of the fact in 
their dealings with them, and instead of rebuking them 
for a hardness which violated no principle which they 
acknowledged, should endeavor to teach them better 
by forbearance and by unexpected retaliations of kind¬ 
ness. 

It will be worth while here to raise the question, If 
injuries committed by heathens were thus sharply dis¬ 
tinguished from injuries committed by Christians, how 


THE LAW OF FORGIVENESS. 


333 


would it be proper for a Christian to deal with an 
injury received from a Jew? Judaism stands midway 
between heathenism and Christianity. It rose out of 
heathenism as twilight out of night, and melted into 
Christianity as twilight into morning. In its earlier 
period it had many peculiarities in common with 
heathenism, but its later form closely resembled Chris¬ 
tianity. It did not, indeed, clearly announce the great 
Christian law of humanity, and it had points which 
led those who embraced it in a perverse spirit into 
an inhumanity almost worse, though less brutal, than 
the inhumanity of heathenism. But it contained the 
germs of the Christian humanity in its doctrine of 
the unity of God and of the creation of man in God’s 
image. It would therefore have been unreasonable 
for a Christian to treat a Jew as one utterly untaught 
in humanity. The Jew was the possessor of a certain 
crude Christianity, and even if he had not been, yet an 
injury done by him to a Christian would generally be 
the trespass of a brother and not the attack of an 
enemy, since, though the Jews were not Christians, 
the earliest Christians, at any rate, were for the most 
part Jews. 

Christians could claim at the hands of Jews the 
rights of countrymen and the rights of fellow-citizen¬ 
ship in the ancient theocracy. Abraham and Moses 
belonged to both, the Psalms of David and the prophe¬ 
cies of Isaiah. An injury done by a Jew was there¬ 
fore a thing to be resented by a Christian, and not a 
tiling to be passively tolerated. This being under¬ 
stood, it is instructive to observe how exactly Christ 
when he became the object of insult and injury, ob> 


334 


ECCE HOMO. 


served his own law. In his murder both Jews and 
Romans were concerned. It has been pointed out in 
a former chapter, in how different a spirit he bore the 
cruelties of his accusers and those of his executioners. 
Towards the Jews he cherishes throughout a bitter 
feeling of resentment, which breaks out before the 
high-priest into threatening words. But before Pilate 
he bears himself gently ; he exhibits no sign of anger, 
and declares his Roman judge to be comparatively 
guiltless of his unjust condemnation. He prays that 
his Roman executioners may be forgiven, although 
they did not merely obey orders but heaped wanton 
insults upon him ; and his reason is, 4 they know not 
what they do.’ This litter of Roman wolves, to whom 
and to whose ancestors no prophet had ever preached, 
whose only morality in dealing with foreigners was to 
subdue and crush them, what wonder if they revelled 
in brutal insult of a Jew who had called himself a 
king? The burning anger he had felt before Caiaphas 
subsided at once in the presence of Roman brutality. 
He rebuked the brother that trespassed against him, 
but when the enemy smote him on the one cheek he 
turned to him the other. 

Another point now requires notice. By Christ’s 
law the Christian is commanded in some cases of in¬ 
jury to go without redress altogether, in others to 
apply for it to the Christian assembly. But the Chris¬ 
tian assembly had no power of compulsion, and there¬ 
fore if the offender proved contumacious, redress was 
denied to the injured man in this case also. It ap¬ 
pears, then, that in no case whatever does Christ coun¬ 
tenance any appeal to the secular courts. Are we 


THE LAW OF FORGIVENESS. 335 

then to suppose that all that machinery for checking 
and punishing crime, which has been established in 
every human society alike, is rejected and repudiated 
by Christ? Since he forbade his followers to avail 
themselves of this machinery, are we to suppose that 
he disapproved of it, and that he intended, when so¬ 
ciety should be remodelled in accordance with his 
morality, that it should be abolished, and that men 
should depend in future for their protection against 
violence upon the power of forgiveness to charm away 
the lawlessness of the robber and the plunderer? 

It is certainly evident that if Christ’s law were uni¬ 
versally practised in a Christian land the administration 
of justice would be suspended. Where all alike con¬ 
tented themselves with first rebuking and in case of 
contumacy renouncing the society of those who in¬ 
jured them, there would be no trials, for there would 
be no prosecutions. Government would be obliged to 
abdicate its function of maintaining tranquillity and 
good order in the kingdom. Is this, then, what Christ 
intended, and did he believe that the influence of the 
Enthusiasm of Humanity would be such as to render 
law and police superfluous? Of Christ’s views on 
civil government we know very little. Still it is not 
conceivable that he should have rejected altogether the 
notion of punishment, since we see that in describing 
the Divine government he introduces it freely. I11 va¬ 
rious parables he has represented himself as a ruler, and 
his conception of the functions of a ruler appears not 
to differ from that commonly received. It most dis¬ 
tinctly includes criminal jurisdiction and punishment. 
We may be sure that one who habitually considered 


33*5 


ECCE HOMO 


governors as charged with the duty of inflicting pun¬ 
ishment, cannot have considered it the duty of subjects 
to prevent punishment from being inflicted. 

It is in the circumstances of the Church at its foun¬ 
dation that we shall find the explanation of the dif¬ 
ficulty. Christ forbids his followers to appeal to the 
secular courts, not because he disapproved of criminal 
law in the abstract, but for the same reason for which 
he systematically passed over everything relating to 
politics and government. It was because the Church 
was established in the midst of a heathen society which 
it was in no way to countenance and yet in no way to 
resist. Of this society the Church was in one sense a 
mortal enemy ; that is, she did not acknowledge its 
right to exist, and she looked forward to a time when 
it should be reconstructed on the basis of an acknowl¬ 
edgment of Christ and of the law of Humanity. On 
the other hand, it was Christ’s fixed resolution to enter 
into no contest with the civil power. Therefore he 
enjoins upon his followers an absolutely passive be¬ 
havior towards it, and in every rule that he lays down, 
while he recognizes the fact that the Church itself has 
no power of compulsion, he makes no use whatever 
of that power residing in the state. 

It appears, then, that the law we have been con¬ 
sidering was dictated by special circumstances. It 
was given to men who had practically no country. 
The paramount duty to humanity had for a time sus¬ 
pended their obligations to the government under 
which they lived. Or rather they were men who, 
while bearing all the burdens laid upon them by the 
government, declined for special reasons all the advan- 


THE LAW OF FORGIVENESS. 337 

tages they might have derived from government. It 
was for a society thus deprived by circumstances of all 
political interests that Christ legislated, for a society 
which was directed to act as good citizens do under a 
usurping but still a settled government, — that is, to 
become political quietists, disturbing as little as possi¬ 
ble the public tranquillity, but at the same time coun¬ 
tenancing as little as possible the unrighteous power. 
Accordingly, in laying down a law for the treatment 
of injuries, Christ entirely disregards the political bear¬ 
ings of the question. He considers no interests but 
those of the parties immediately concerned. To raise 
the question whether his law of abstinence from prose¬ 
cution is consistent with social order is therefore to 
misunderstand it. Owing to special circumstances 
this element was eliminated from the problem. Like 
the First Law of Motion, this law postulates the 
absence of external forces. What it affirms is that, 
supposing a wrong committed in redressing which 
only the injured party is interested, he should endeavor 
to bring the offender to submission by patience if it be 
an offence of ignorance, by rebuke if he knew better, 
but in no case by force. 

The special circumstances have long passed away, 
and it is now impossible to eliminate from the problem 
all that bears upon public order. Society, and not 
the injured party only, has now to be considered in the 
treatment of an injury. Christ’s law therefore ceases 
in many cases to be serviceable as a rule of life. But 
if this were so in all cases, it would not therefore lose 
its value. The Fiiat Law of Motion is still the foun¬ 
dation of mechanics, although no body in the universe 

1 S 


ECCE HOMO. 


?3« 

was ever actually in the condition that law supposes. 
Christ’s law may be no longer an invariable law for 
action, but it is an invariable law for feeling and for 
motive. Instead of abstaining from prosecution it may 
now be a positive duty to prosecute, but it must no 
longer be a pleasure to prosecute. The prosecution 
that duty dictates is externally the same act as the pros¬ 
ecution prompted by selfish revenge, but essentially it 
is a totally different act. That this essential difference 
is now clear, and that it is applicable to practice, is one 
atnding effect of Christ’s law. Nor is prosecution in¬ 
consistent with kindness. Punishments may once more, 
6mce the Church became reconciled to the State, have 
become Christian acts and may have their use, and dis¬ 
charge in some cases the same functions that Christ 
intended to be discharged by passive tolerance. The 
sense of a rule higher than self-interest may be roused 
sometimes by severity, sometimes by unexpected gen¬ 
tleness, sometimes by the mixture of both. But though 
the prohibition of severity must now be considered as 
taken off, yet the emphatic recommendation of gentle¬ 
ness remains. It remains a duty in all cases where 
such a course is likely to succeed to endeavor by every 
act of kindness consistent with duty to the public to 
point out to the rude and heathenish heart ‘ the more 
excellent way of charity.’ 


339 


CHAPTER XXIV. 

CONCLUSION. 

pHE outline of Christian morality is now com- 
pletely drawn, and it only remains to take a 
parting glance at the picture from some point where 
we can see it all in one view. 

Let us endeavor, then, once more to answer the 
question, What is the Christian Church? 

First, it is a commonwealth. In other words, it is a 
society of men who meet together for common objects, 
and it differs from the minor clubs or unions under 
which men avail themselves of the principle of asso¬ 
ciation, and resembles those greater societies which we 
call states, in this respect that it claims unlimited self- 
sacrifice on the part of its members, and demands that 
the interest and safety of the whole shall be set by each 
member above his own interest and above all private 
interests whatever. 

Secondly, as all commonwealths are originally based 
upon some common quality, and for the most part oil 
a blood-relationship, real or supposed, of the mem¬ 
bers, so is the Christian Church based upon a blood- 
relationship, but the most comprehensive of all, the 
kindred of every human being to every other. 

It is therefore absolutely open to all human beings 
who choose to become members of it. 



340 


ECCE HOMO. 


But the objects for which this commonwealth exists 
are much less obvious and intelligible than those for 
which the local commonwealths of the earth exist. 
Accordingly it is demanded of every member of the 
Ch: istian Commonwealth that he be introduced into it 
with a prescribed form and in a public manner, that 
he be instructed in the objects for which it exists, and 
that he testify his membership from time to time by a 
common meal taken in conjunction with other mem¬ 
bers also according to a prescribed form. 

The effect of this system and of the absence of local 
boundaries is that the objects of the Christian Common¬ 
wealth, though less obvious, are far better defined than 
those of other commonwealths, and that it approaches 
far nearei to the theoretical perfection of a state. 
Other states are but accidental aggregates, whose at¬ 
traction of cohesion was originally a clannish instinct 
or a common terror of some near enemy or the ex¬ 
ternal pressure of physical barriers ; such states, though 
when once formed they may conveniently be used for 
definite objects, yet cannot properly be said to have 
any definite object at all. But the Christian Common¬ 
wealth has the same object now which it had at the 
beginning, and what that object is it is and always has 
been easy to discover. 

The Christian has, as such, a definite relation to 
every other human being, to every Christian as a fellow- 
citizen, and to every person who is not Christian as 
possessing that humanity which is the ground of 
Christianity. 

In ordinary states there arises out of the union, the 
relationships, the intercourse, the common interests of 


CONCLUSION. 


34* 

the citizens, a sense of duties towards each other and 
of justice. This sense expresses itself in laws, which, 
at first few and but half-just, have a reacting effect 
upon the sense of justice which produced them, 
developing it and causing it gradually to produce 
more and juster laws. By this system of laws the 
citizens are taught to abstain from doing serious inju¬ 
ries to each other, and a spirit of sympathy is fostered 
which disposes them to help each other in difficulties. 
The morality which thus springs up does not at the 
beginning influence the citizens in their dealings with 
foreigners, but is supposed to be inseparable from the 
civic relation. In a time of general intercourse be¬ 
tween nations the obligations of justice become in a 
certain degree recognized even between foreigners, 
but grudgingly, and active sympathy between them 
scarcely exists at all. 

A similar process goes forward in the Christian 
Commonwealth, and, as it includes all mankind, the 
sense of duty which springs up in it is a sense of duty 
to man as man, and whatever kindness it fosters is 
also not exclusive but truly cosmopolitan or humane. 
In the Christian Commonwealth also the sense of 
duty gives birth to laws ; and whatever laws are com¬ 
mon to all secular states are transferred to it, while 
some new ones are suggested by its peculiar conditions. 
But whereas in other states the greatest importance is 
attached to these laws and the greatest trouble taken to 
make them as just, as numerous, and as exact as pos¬ 
sible, in the Christian Commonwealth a different vie\* 
is taken. The laws themselves are not considered as 
very important; no pains are bestowed upon forming 


ECCE HOMO. 


34 2 

them precisely; and they exist rather as rules gen¬ 
erally understood in the minds of the citizens than 
as written statutes. On the other hand, that sense of 
obligation in which all laws have their origin is re¬ 
garded as inexpressibly important. Every expedient is 
used to increase the keenness of this sense to such a 
point that it shall instantly and instinctively suggest 
the proper course of action in any given case. 

This increased and intense moral sensitiveness has 
an effect upon the objective morality of the Christian 
Commonwealth, and it also gives a peculiar tone to 
the character of individual Christians. Its effect upon 
objective morality is to create a number of new duties 
which the duller moral sense of secular states does not 
apprehend. These new duties, as has been said, are 
not carefully formulated, but they are apprehended 
very plainly and universally recognized. Of these 
new duties some do not differ in kind from those which 
secular morality prescribes. They are but new appli¬ 
cations of principles which under other systems are 
admitted but applied imperfectly. But besides these 
a whole class of new duties arise in the Christian 
Commonwealth which are different in kind from those 
acknowledged in secular commonwealths. These are 
positive or active duties—duties, that is, not of re¬ 
fraining from injuries but of promoting actively the 
welfare of others. In secular states, though men had 
frequently appeared who had performed these duties, 
they had not performed them as duties but rather as 
works of supererogation, and for performing them 
they had received from their fellow-citizens not simple 
approbation but such admiration as we bestow on 


CONCLUSION. 


343 


those who do something extraordinary. These ex¬ 
traordinary sendees to humanity become ordinary and 
imperative in the Christian Commonwealth. They 
fall naturally into two classes — sendees to the bodies 
of men and sendees to their characters and moral 
development; and to perform either class of duties 
well, truly to serve men’s bodies or their souls, requires 
the most assiduous study, calls for comprehensive 
knowledge and perpetual earnest endeavor. 

But the fact that in the Christian Commonwealth so 
much importance is attached to a strong moral sense* 
the fact that this is used as a substitute for strict laws, 
modifies individual character even more than objective 
morality. As this moral sense is expected to discover 
the right course of action in any given case without 
the help of a law, so, vice versa , it is not considered 
satisfactory that the right act should be done, unless 
the moral sense be active in dictating it. Merely for 
the purpose of discovering the right act the moral 
sense would often be unnecessary ; in most cases the 
right act is determined for us by the customs of society, 
or by our own previous experience of similar cases. 
But the rule of the Christian Commonwealth is, that 
though the feeling be not necessary to discover the 
light act, yet the act must always be accompanied by 
the feeling. Therefore to perform an act of kindness 
coldly, an act of self-denial reluctantly, an act of for¬ 
giveness with suppressed ill-will, or any right act 
whatever from interested motives, whether to escape 
punishment or to win applause, or mechanically from 
a habit of following fixed maxims, or from any other 
motive except the moral sense, is to break the fun da 


344 


ECCE HOMO. 


mental law of the Christian Commonwealth. The 
Christian therefore must, it appears, cherish a peculiar 
temperament, such that every combination of circum¬ 
stances involving moral considerations may instanta¬ 
neously affect him in a peculiar w T ay and excite pecu¬ 
liar feelings in him. He must not arrive at the right 
practical conclusion after a calculation or a struggle, 
but by an instantaneous impulse. Rightly to appre¬ 
ciate what the circumstances are may indeed cost him 
thought and study, but when once the position is made 
clear to his mind, the moral sense should speak as 
promptly as the note sounds when the string of a 
musical instrument is struck. 

This moral sensitiveness, this absolute harmony of 
inward desire with outward obligation, was called by 
Christ and his Apostles by a name of which holiness is 
the recognized English equivalent, and it is attributed 
to the presence of a Divine Spirit within the soul. It 
is the absolute and ultimate test of true membership 
in the Christian Commonwealth. He who has it not 
cannot be a true member whatever he may have, and 
he who has it is a member whatever he may lack. 
But how is this moral sensitiveness produced ? It is 
the effect of a single ardent feeling excited in the soul. 
A single conception enthusiastically grasped is found 
powerful enough to destroy the very root of all immo¬ 
rality within the heart. As every enthusiasm that a 
man can conceive makes a certain class of sins impos¬ 
sible to him, and raises him not only above the com¬ 
mission of them, but beyond the very temptation to 
commit them, so there exists an enthusiasm which 
makes all sin whatever impossible. This enthusiasm 


CONCLUSION. 


345 


ts emphaticall}’ the presence of the Holy Spirit. It is 
called here the Enthusiasm of Humanity, because it is 
that respect for human beings which no one altogether 
wantb raised to the point of enthusiasm. Being a 
reverence for human beings as such , and not for the 
good qualities they may exhibit, it embraces the bad 
as well as the good, and as it contemplates human 
beings in their ideal — that is, in what they might be 
— it desires not the apparent, but the real and highest 
welfare of each ; lastly, it includes the person himself 
who feels it, and, loving self too only in the ideal, 
differs as much as possible from selfishness, being 
associated with self-respect, humility, and indepen¬ 
dence, as selfishness is allied with self-contempt, with 
arrogance, and with vanity. 

Once more, how is this enthusiasm kindled? All 
virtues perpetuate themselves in a manner. When 
the pattern is once given it will be printed in a thou¬ 
sand copies. This enthusiasm, then, was shown to 
men in its most consummate form in Jesus Christ. 
From him it flow's as from a fountain. How it was 
kindled in him who knows? ‘The abysmal deeps of 
personality * hide this secret. It w T as the wfill of God . 
to beget no second son like him. But since Christ 
showed it to men, it has been found possible for them 
to imitate it, and every new imitation, by bringing 
the marvel visibly before us, revives the power of 
the original. As a matter of fact the Enthusiasm is 
kindled constantly in new hearts, and though in few 
it burns brightly, yet perhaps there are not very many 
in which it altogether goes out. At least the concep¬ 
tion of morality which Christ gave has now become 
15 * 


ECCE HOMO. 


34 6 

the universal one, and no man is thought good who 
does not in some measure satisfy it. 

Living examples are, as a general rule, more potent 
than those of which we read in books. And it is true 
that the sight of very humble degrees of Christian 
humanity in action will do more to kindle the Enthu¬ 
siasm, in most cases, than reading the most impressive 
scenes in the life of Christ. It cannot, therefore, be 
said that Christ is the direct source of all humanity. 
It is handed on like the torch from runner to runner 
in the lace of life. Still it not only existed in Christ 
in a preeminent degree, but the circumstances of his 
life and death gave him preeminent opportunities of 
displaying it. The story of his life will always re¬ 
main the one record in which the moral perfection 
of man stands revealed in its root and its unity, the 
hidden spring made palpably manifest by which the 
whole machine is moved. And as, in the will of 
God, this unique man was elected to a unique sorrow, 
and holds as undisputed a sovereignty in suffering as 
in self-devotion, all lesser examples and lives will for¬ 
ever hold a subordinate place, and serve chiefly to re¬ 
flect light on the central and original Example. In 
his wounds all human sorrows will hide themselves, 
and all human self-denials support themselves against 
his cross. — But we are travelling into questions which 
we are not yet in a condition to discuss. 

Our subject has hitherto been Christian morality. 
We have considered the scheme by which Christ 
united men together, cured them of their natural an¬ 
tipathy, cured them of their selfishness. But man has 
other enemies beside himself, and has need of pro- 


CONCLUSION. 


347 


tections and supports which morality cannot give. He 
is at enmity with Nature as well as with his brother- 
man. He is beset by two great enemies with whom 
he knows not how to cope. The first is Physical 
Evil: the second is Death. The harm which is done 
to us by our fellow-men we can at least understand. 
We understand either that they are angry with us for 
some reason, or that they have personal objects to 
gratify which involve suffering to us. What we can 
understand we can sometimes guard against, we can 
generally foresee. But when the forces of Nature 
become hostile to us, we know neither why it is so, 
nor what to do. Most of these enemies attack us 
capriciously, but one of them is certain to attack 
us sooner or later, and certain to prevail. He may 
not be the worst among them ; he may not be an 
enemy at all; but he is more dreaded than any, 
because he is more mysterious. And though we 
know little of Death, we cannot help thinking it a 
comfortless torpor, that deprives the hero of his hero¬ 
ism, the face of its smile, the eye of its expression, 
that first strikes the human form with a dull, unsocial 
stiffness, and then peels the beauty from it like a rind 
and exposes the skeleton. In different degrees men 
learn and always have learnt to overcome this terror, 
and to meet death with contentment, and even in some 
cases with joy. But death remains the fatal bar to 
all complete satisfaction, the disturber of all great 
plans, the Nemesis of all great happiness, the standing 
dire discouragement of human nature. 

What comfort Christ gave men under these evils, 
how he reconciled them to nature as well as to each 


343 


ECCE HOMO. 


other by offering to them new views of the Power by 
which the world is governed, by his own triumph 
over death, and by his revelation of eternity, will be 
the subject of another treatise. 

In closing the subject for the present, let us reflect 
for a moment upon the magnitude of the work which 
Christ accomplished, and the nature of which we 
ha^e been investigating. We may consider it in two 
very different aspects. It was, in the first place, a 
work of speculation, which we may compare with the 
endeavors of several ancient philosophers to picture 
to themselves a commonwealth founded on juster and 
clearer principles than the states they saw around 
them. Plato made such an attempt, and a later phi¬ 
losopher was on the point of realizing his conception 
in an actual, palpable, Platonopolis. The Kingdom 
of God, the New Jerusalem, which Christ founded, 
was similar to this speculative state. He seized upon 
the substantial principles which lie at the founda¬ 
tion of every civil society, and without waiting foi 
favorable circumstances or for permission of kings, 
and not only dispensing with but utterly repudiating a 
local habitation, he conceived a commonwealth de¬ 
veloped, as it were, from within. It was one of those 
daring imaginations, in which, as a general rule, we 
allow philosophers to indulge in their studies, not 
because we imagine for a moment that they can ever 
be realized, but because they are useful educational 
exercises for youth, and because in filling up the 
paper design suggestions may be thrown out which a 
practical man may be able gradually to work into the 
constitution of some existing state. To make any 


CONCLUSION. 


349 


more piactical use of such schemes almost all the 
practical statesmen that ever lived would at once pro¬ 
nounce impossible. They know better, of course, 
than all other men, with how little wisdom the world 
is governed. They regard the whole framework of 
all institutions as determined by the plain, universal, 
animal, propensities of men and the irresistible con¬ 
straint of external conditions. They believe that for 
(he most part nothing can be done by the wisdom 
of individuals but to watch the operation of these 
causes, to take advantage of each passion as it rises, 
and sometimes to procure the adoption of a measure 
which is solidly good, when it happens to be mo¬ 
mentarily popular. But any comprehensive scheme, 
appealing to first principles and at the same time de¬ 
manding sacrifices from men, they consider in the 
nature of things impracticable. Such, then, was 
Christ’s scheme, regarded as a speculation. 

We do not compare Plato’s Republic with the re¬ 
publics of Athens or Rome, because, however interest¬ 
ing the former may be on paper, it has never been 
realized. It may be very perfect, but Athens and 
Rome were more ; they existed. But the speculative 
commonwealth of Christ may be compared to the 
commonwealths of the world as well as to those of 
philosophers. For, however impossible it may seem, 
this speculation of a commonwealth developed from 
first principles has been realized on a grand scale t 
It stands in history among other states; it subsists in 
the midst of other states, connected with them and yet 
distinct. Though so refined and philosophic in its 
constitution, it has not less vigor than the states which 


ECCE HOMO. 


350 

are founded on the relations of family, or language, or 
the convenience of self-defence and trade. Not less 
vigor, and certainly far more vitality. It has already 
long outlasted all the states which were existing at 
the lime of its foundation; it numbers far more citi- 
sens than any of the states which it has seen spring 
up near it. It subsists without the help of costly 
armaments; resting on no accidental aid 01 physical 
support, but on an inherent immortality, it defied the 
enmity of ancient civilization, the brutality of medi¬ 
aeval barbarism, ana under the present universal em¬ 
pire of public opinion, it is so secure that even those 
parts of it seem indestructible which deserve to die. 
It has added a new cnapter to the science of politics; 
it has passed through almost every change of form 
which a state can know; it has been democratical, 
aristocratical; it has even made some essays towards 
constitutional monarchv; and it has furnished the 
most majestic and scientific tyranny of which history 
makes mention. 

For the New Jerusalem, as we witness it, is no more 
exempt from corruption than was the Old. That 
early Christian poet who saw it descending in incor¬ 
ruptible purity 4 out of heaven from God,’ saw, as poets 
use, an ideal. He saw that which perhaps for a point 
of time was almost realized, that which may be 
realized again. But what we see in history behind 
us and in the world about us is, it must be confessed, 
not like 4 a bride adorned for her husband.’ We see 
something that is admirable and much that is great 
and wonderful, but not this splendor of maiden purity. 
The bridal dress is worn out, and the orange flower is 


CONCLUSION. 


35 * 


faded. First the rottenness of dying superstitions, 
then barbaric manners, then intellectualism preferring 
system and debate to brotherhood, strangling Chris¬ 
tianity with theories and framing out of it a charla¬ 
tan’s philosophy which madly strives to stop the 
progress of science — all these corruptions have in the 
successive ages of its long life infected the Church, and 
many new and monstrous perversions of individual 
character have disgraced it. The creed which makes 
human nature richer and larger, makes men at the 
same time capable of profounder sins; admitted into 
a holier sanctuary, they are exposed to the temptation 
of a greater sacrilege ; awakened to the sense of new 
obligations, they sometimes lose their simple respect 
for the old ones ; saints that have resisted the subtlest 
temptations sometimes begin again, as it were, by 
yielding without a struggle to the coarsest; hypocrisy 
has become tenfold more ingenious and better sup¬ 
plied with disguises; in short, human nature has 
inevitably developed downwards as well as upwards, 
and if the Christian ages be compared with those of 
heathenism they are found worse as well as better, 
and it is possible to make it a question whether man¬ 
kind has gained on the whole. 

To be sure, the question is a frivolous one. What 
j^ood for the grown man to regret his childhood, and 
to think his intelligence and experience a poor com¬ 
pensation for the careless happiness that accompanied 
his childish ignorance? It was by Nature’s law that 
he grew to manhood, and if infancy can be happy 
without wisdom, a foolish and superstitious man can¬ 
not hope for the same happiness. Those who saw 


35 2 


ECCE HOMO. 


‘ old Proteus rising from the sea ’ may or may not have 
been happier than we are ; we, at any rate, should be 
none the happier for seeing him. But the triumph 
of the Christian Church is that it is there , — that the 
most daring of all speculative dreams, instead of being 
found impracticable, has been carried into effect, and, 
when carried into effect, instead of being confined to 
a few select spirits, has spread itself over a vast space 
of the earth’s surface, and, when thus diffused instead 
cf giving place after an age or two to something more 
adapted to a later time, has endured for two thousand 
years, and, at the end of two thousand years, instead 
of lingering as a mere wreck spared by the tolerance 
of the lovers of the past, still displays vigor and a 
capacity of adjusting itself to new conditions, and 
lastly, in all the transformations it undergoes, remains 
visibly the same thing and inspired by its Founder’s 
universal and unquenchable spirit. 

It is in this and not in any freedom from abuses that 
the divine power of Christianity appears. Again it is 
in this, and not in any completeness or all-sufficiency. 
It is a common mistake of Christians to represent their 
faith as alone valuable and as, by itself, containing all 
that man can want or can desire. But it is only one 
of many revelations, and is very insufficient by itself 
for man’s happiness. Some of the men in whom the 
Christian spirit has been strongest have been among 
the most miserable of the race ; some nations have im¬ 
bibed it; deeply and have not been led by it to happi¬ 
ness and power, but have only been consoled by it in 
degradation. Happiness wants besides some physical 
conditions, animal health and energy; it wants also 


CONCLUSION. 


353 


much prudence, knowledge of physical facts, and 
resource. To assist us in arrangingtbe physical condi¬ 
tions of our well-being another mighty revelation has 
been made tc us, for the most part in these latter ages. 
We live under the blessed light of science, a light yet 
far from its meridian and dispersing every day some 
noxious superstition, some cowardice of the human 
spirit. These two revelations stand side by side. The 
points in which they have been supposed to come into 
collision do not belong to our present subject; they 
concern the theology and not the morality of the 
Christian Church. The moral revelation which we 
have been considering has never been supposed to jar 
with science. Both are time and both are essential to 
human happiness. It may be that since the methods 
of science were reformed and its steady progress be¬ 
gan, it has been less exposed to error and perversion 
than Christianity, and, as it is peculiarly the treasure 
belonging to the present age, it becomes us to guard it 
with peculiar jealousy, to press its claims, and to treat 
those who, content with Christianity, disregard science 
as Christ treated the enemies of light, 4 those that took 
away the keys of knowledge,’ in his day. Assuredly 
they are graceless zealots who quote Moses against the 
expounders of a wisdom which Moses desired in vain, 
because it was reserved for a far later generation, for 
these modern men, to whom we may with accurate 
truth apply Christ’s words and say that the least among 
them is greater than Moses. On the other hand, the 
Christian morality, if somewhat less safe and exempt 
from perversion than science, is more directly and vi¬ 
tally beneficial to mankind. The scientific life is less 


354 


ECCE HOMO. 


noble than the Christian; it is better, so to speak, to 
be a citizen in the New Jerusalem than in the New 
Athens; it is better, surely, to find everywhere a 
brother and friend, like the Christian, than, like the 
philosopher, to ‘ disregard your relative and friend so 
completely as to be ignorant not only how he gets on, 
but almost whether he is a human being or some other 
sort of creature.’ * 

But the achievement of Christ, in founding by his 
single will and power a structure so durable and so 
universal, is like no other achievement which history 
records. The masterpieces of the men of action are 
coarse and common in comparison with it, and the 
masterpieces of speculation flimsy and insubstantial. 
When we speak of it the commonplaces of admiration 
fail us altogether. Shall we speak of the originality 
of the design, of the skill displayed in the execution? 
All such terms are inadequate. Originality and con¬ 
triving skill operated indeed, but, as it were, implicitly. 
The creative effort which produced that against which, 
it is said, the gates of hell shall not prevail, cannot be 
analyzed. No architects’ designs were furnished for 
the New Jerusalem, no committee drew up rules for 
the Universal Commonwealth. If in the works of 
Nature we can trace the indications of calculation, of 
a struggle with difficulties, of precaution, of ingenuity, 
then in Christ’s work it may be that the same indica¬ 
tions occur. But these inferior and secondary powers 
were not consciously exercised; they were implicitly 
present in the manifold yet single creative act. The 
inconceivable work was done in calmness; before the 


* Plato, Theaet. p. 80 . 


CONCLUSION. 


355 


eyes of men it was noiselessly accomplished, attracting 
little attention. Who can describe that which unites 
men? Who has entered into the formation of speech 
which is the symbol of their union? Who can de¬ 
scribe exhaustively the origin of civil society? He who 
can do these things can explain the origin of the Chris¬ 
tian Church. For others it must be enough to say, 
‘ the Holy Ghost fell on those that believed.’ No man 
saw the building of the New Jerusalem, the workmen 
crowded together, the unfinished walls and unpaved 
streets; no man heard the clink of trowel and pick¬ 
axe ; it descended out of heaven from God . 


NOTES. 


Note i. Page 17. 

“ Wonder-working pictures are generally but poor paintings.” 

Note 2. Page 46. 

“ For him no child 

Upon his knees shall lisp a father’s name, 

Safe from the war and battle-field returned.” 

II. v. 408, Earl of Derby's Tr\ 

Note 3. Page 252. 

44 Then to the female slaves he gave command 
To wash the body, and anoint with oil, 

Apart, that Priam might not see his son ; 

Lest his grieved heart its passion unrestrained 
Should utter, and Achilles, roused to wrath, 

His suppliant slay, and Jove’s command transgress.” 

Earl of Derby’s Tr. 

Note 4. Page 252. 

“Then would I fain have slain him with the sword, 

Had not some God my rising fury quelled, 

And set before my mind the public voice, 

The odium I shall have to bear ’mid Greeks, 

It branded with the name of parricide.” 

Ibid. 


Note 5. Page 322. 

“ Not the chief of such a host 
As ours, on whom, from youth to latest age, 
Jove hath the gift bestowed, to bear the brunt 
Of hardy war.” — II. xiv. 85-87, Ibid. 


PREFACE SUPPLEMENTARY 


TO 

ECCE HOMO. 


Objections have been taken to the title of this book as not exactly 
describing its purpose. Probably no short title that could have been 
devised would have escaped the same objections. If the writer could 
have conveyed his intention completely in his title, he might have 
spared his preface. 

He is surprised to find his kind and cordial critic in Macmillan'* 
Magazine quietly discussing the possibility that that preface may prove 
to have been a fiction. He fully agrees with those who declare that 
any such mystification on such a subject would be immoral. 

One word he wishes to say about the charge of confident dogmatism 
which is brought against him. Dogmatism is no doubt used by supe¬ 
riors to inferiors, but it is also used in conversation between people who 
feel themselves perfectly equal. Expressions of modest deference, 
confessions of fallibility and imperfect knowledge, are wearisome be¬ 
tween equals. The writer addresses throughout free inquirers like him¬ 
self, and uses the tone which he would like others to adopt towards 
him. His book is not a book of authority, but of inquiry and sug¬ 
gestion ; it is intended not to close discussion, but to open it. It asks 
for consideration and, where it is wrong, for refutation. There may, 
however, be some who complain with more reason of dogmatism. 
There may be readers who belong to some school or sect with which 
the writer has little sympathy, and whose favorite opinions and inter¬ 
pretations he has no doubt in many cases entirely overlooked. Such 
readers will naturally be offended when they find what they regard as 
obviously true treated as obviously false. But they ought to coasidex 


I f* 

V 


PREFACE SUPPLEMENTARY. 


that on such a subject as Christianity no one can write for all at once ; 
every writer must suppose that he will be read only by those who will 
grant him some general postulates which are by no means self-evident; 
the reader who cannot grant these, ought to know that the book was 
not intended for him. If it had been necessary to prove every point 
wlrich able and famous writers have denied, assuredly those for whom 
Ecce Hovio was written would never have had patience to read it, nor 
indeed would the author have had patience to write it. 

As this book contains no criticism of documents, some reviewers 
have supposed that the author wrote without any criterion in Iris mind 
by which to test the veracity of the narratives from which he drew 
his conclusions, and that he simply assumed the truth of everything 
which struck his fancy, or suited a preconceived theory. It may there¬ 
fore be advisable to give here a short account of the method he pur¬ 
sued. 

He was concerned with four writers who, in nearness to the events 
they record and probable means of acquiring information, belong to 
the better class of historical witnesses, but whose veracity has been 
strongly impeached by critics, both on the ground of internal discrep¬ 
ancies and of the intrinsic improbability of their story. Out of these 
four writers he desired, not to extract a life of Christ, not to find out 
all that can be known about him, but to form such a rudimentary con¬ 
ception of his general character and objects as it may be possible to 
form while the vexed critical questions remain in abeyance. The de¬ 
tection of discrepancies in the documents establishes a certain degree 
of independence in them, and thus gives weight to their agreements; 
in particular, the wide divergence in tone and subject-matter of the 
Fourth Gospel from the other three affords a strong presumption in 
favor of all statements in which it coincides with them. The rudiment 
of certainty which the writer sought, he accordingly expected to find 
in the consent of all the witnesses. If the statements unanimously at¬ 
tested should prove numerous enough to afford any outline of Christ’s 
life, however meagre, he proposed to rest content with this. 

The following propositions are deduced from St. Mark, and the ref¬ 
erences are to that Gospel: — 


PREFACE SUPPLEMENTARY. 


V 


». Christ assumed a position of authority, different from that as¬ 
sumed by ordinary teachers : i. 22. 

2. He claimed to be the Messiah : viii. 29, 30; xii. 6 ; xiv. 62. 

3. Under this title he claimed an inexpressible personal rank and 
dignity : xii. 36, 37 ; xiii. 6, 7. 

4. He claimed the right to revise and give a free interpretation to the 
Mosaic Law : ii. 27 ; x. 4. 

5. He claimed the power of forgiving sins : ii. 10. 

6. He commanded a number of men to attach themselves to his per¬ 
son, ii. 14; x. 21 ; to the society thus fonnedhe gave special rules of 
life, x. 43, 44; made his name a bond of union among them, ix. 37- 
41 ; and contemplated the continuance of the society under the same 
conditions after his departure : xiii. 13. 

7. He was believed by his followers to work miracles. 

8. These miracles were principally miracles of healing. 

9. The society he founded was gathered, in the first instance, from 
the Jews : vii. 27 ; but it was intended ultimately to embrace the Gen¬ 
tiles also : xiii. 10. 

10. Though he assumed the character of King and Messiah, he de¬ 
clined to undertake the ordinary functions of kings : xii. 14. 

11. He required from his disciples personal devotion, and the adop¬ 
tion of his example as their rule of life : viii. 34, 35 ; x. 45. 

12. He spoke of a Holy Spirit as inspiring himself: iii. 20-30; 
and also as inspiring his followers : xiii. II. 

13. He spoke much of the importance of having good feelings as 
well as good deeds : vii. 15-23 : ix. 50. 

14. He demanded positive and, as it were, original acts of virtue 
passing beyond the routine of obligation : x. 21. 

15. He denounced vehemently those whose morality was of an out¬ 
ward, mechanical kind, and he named them hypocrites : vii. 1 — 13. 

16. By these denunciations, and by his claims to Messiahship, he 
placed himself in deadly opposition to the Scribes and Pharisees : xii. 

17. He required from his followers a spirit of devotion to the wel¬ 
fare of their fellow-creatures : ix. 35 ; xii. 31 ; and he declared him* 
self to be actuated bv the same spirit: x. 45. 


VI 


PREFACE SUPPLEMENTARY. 


18. Accordingly he went much among sick people, healing them, 
sometimes with strong signs of emotion : vii. 34. 

19. He enjoined upon his followers a similar philanthropy: x. 21 
44-5J vi. 13. 

20. He occupied himself also with curing moral disease, and par* 
ticularly in the outcasts of society : ii. 16, 17. 

21. He taught the forgiveness of injuries : xi. 25. 

Now of these propositions, which have been deduced from St. 
Mark, it is to be observed, in the first place, that they are equally 
deducible, with scarcely the alteration of a word, from each of the 
other three Gospels. The only exception to this is that the author 
of the Fourth Gospel, who confines himself very much to generalities, 
does not speak definitely of the forgiveness of injuries or of the duty 
of relieving men’s physical wants. On the other hand, he attests more 
strongly than the other Evangelists the prominence which was given, 
in Christ’s moral teaching, to love. As forgiveness and philanthropy 
are among the most obvious manifestations of love, we may certainly 
say that St. John, too, though not expressly, yet implicitly, attests 
that they were prescribed by Christ. In the next place, these propo¬ 
sitions assert things about which the Evangelists were most unlikely to 
be mistaken. For, first, they are not isolated incidents which, how¬ 
ever generally received, might be traceable ultimately to a single wit¬ 
ness. They refer to the habitual acts, to the customary words of 
Christ If Christ claimed to be Messiah once, he did so often; if he 
denounced the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, he did so systematically. 
Secondly, they are public and conspicuous acts and words which it 
would be difficult to falsify in the lifetime and within the knowledge 
of those who had been witnesses of them. 

So far, therefore, these propositions are attested in the most com¬ 
plete way. But one objection may be made to the evidence. It may 
be said that it is exclusively Christian evidence, and, therefore, that it 
may have been corrupted by Christian p v ejudices in two principal 
points: Christ may have been simply a teacher, and the claim to Mes- 
siahship may have been an invention of his followers. Next, having 
represented him as the Messiah, they may have felt it necessary to rep¬ 
resent him — also contrary to the truth — as working miracles. 


PREFACE SUPPLEMENTARY. 


Vll 

Bat, indeed, that Christ did himself claim Messiahship cannot rea¬ 
sonably be doubted. His death is explicable on no other supposition. 
On this point assuredly his enemies and his followers were agreed. 
Nor can it be doubted, by the present writer at least, that he was be¬ 
lieved in his lifetime, and not merely after his death, to work miracles. 
All those circumstances which have been represented as suspicious, — 
his unwillingness to perform miracles in certain cases, the contempt he 
expressed for those whose faith depended exclusively upon them, —are 
strong evidence that the miracles were at least no afterthoughts of the 
biographers, for such circumstances were most unlikely to occur either 
in legend or in falsification. The fact that Christ appeared as a worker 
of miracles is the best attested fact in his whole biography, both by 
the absolute unanimity of all the witnesses, by tire confirmatory cir¬ 
cumstances just mentioned, and by countless other special confirma¬ 
tions of circumstances not likely to be invented, striking sayings insep¬ 
arably connected with them, &c., in particular cases. 

If, then, Christ did claim to be Messiah and to work miracles, it 
does not appear which of the above propositions Christian prejudice 
would have any interest or tendency to pervert. We have in them a 
perfectly consistent and, as it seems to the writer, an irrefragable out¬ 
line of that part of Christ’s life which is discussed in these pages. The 
writer has adopted it as his framework, and has not attempted to add 
to it anything fundamental, but has simply sought to find in the Gos¬ 
pels matter illustrative of it. 

This illustrative matter which is drawn from particular Gospels rests, 
of course, on inferior evidence. But evidence inferior to the best may 
• have very great probability, and there are certain obvious criteria by 
which this probability may be estimated. In the case of teachings, or 
maxims, the best criterion is their congruity with that general outline 
of Christ’s system in which all the Evangelists agree. If they explain 
it and make it consistent, then, coming from witnesses not ill-furnished 
with the means of acquiring true information, they will d(6erve to be 
received. Their genuineness is often confirmed by other circumstances. 
For example, the same thought in itself agreeable to Christ’s charac¬ 
ter, sometimes appears over and over again, clothed in different forms, 


Mil 


PREFACE SUPPLEMENTARY. 


expressed in different figures of speech ; or two doctrines compliment 
ary to each other, — that is, such that the person who holds one 
must logically hold the other also, — appear in different Gospels oi in 
different parts of the same Gospel; or something striking in the ex¬ 
pression seems to bear the stamp of a remarkable mind. In this man 
ner there may be collected a considerable body of illustration both of 
Christ’s character and of the great Christian moral principle, the di¬ 
vine inspiration which makes virtue natural, active, tender, elevated, 
resentful, forgiving. On the other hand, isolated maxims occurring 
once only, and not readily connecting themselves with what is radical 
in the system, are in this book generally passed over. 

Similar criteria may, to a certain extent, be applied to Christ’s acts. 
Acts which are evidently in character gain credibility, and this credi¬ 
bility is increased when there is about them something beyond the or¬ 
dinary reach, or beside the purpose, of invention. The account of the 
woman taken in adultery has scarcely any external authority. But it 
seems to derive great probability from the fact that the conduct at¬ 
tributed to Christ in it is left half explained, so that, as it stands, it 
does not satisfy the impulses which lead to the invention and reception 
of fictitious stories. 

The peculiar mannerism, if the expression may be used, of the 
Fourth Gospel, has caused it to be suspected of being at least a freely 
idealized portraiture of Christ. In this book, therefore, it is not re¬ 
ferred to, except in confirmation of statements made in the other Gos¬ 
pels, and once or twice where its testimony seemed in itself probable 
and free from the suspected peculiarities. 

Resting then upon a basis of absolutely uniform testimony, upon 
facts merely illustrated and explained by less certain tradition, the 
writer has endeavored to describe a moralist speaking with authority 
and perpetuating his doctrine by means of a society. It is this union 
of morals and politics that he finds to be characteristic of Christianity. 
But some of his readers, he has observed, fail to grasp the conception. 
They insist (the objection is repeated from a private letter) that Christ, 
as far as concerns morality, does not differ from Seneca, except iri the 
matter of his teaching. Seneca says, “You ought to do this,” and 


PREFACE SUPPLEMENTARY. 


IX 


Christ, however authoritative his style may be, can say no more. It 
Is part of the same objection, as will be shown further on, when they 
maintain that those discoveries in morality, which have been attributed 
to Christ in this book, are no discoveries at all, but were known to the 
world already. 

Let us look to the facts. Let us compare a disciple of Christ with 
a Stoic and reader of Seneca. They existed side by side at the end 
of the first century. Was their view of the obligations resting upon 
them similar ? It was totally different The Stoic rules were without 
sanctions. If they were violated, what could be said to the offender? 
All that could be said was, il Nempe hoc indocti, ” or “ Chrysippus non 
dicet idem.” To which how easy to reply, “ I esteem Chrysippus, but 
on this point I differ from him ! ” To Christian lapsi it was said, 
“You have renounced your baptism ; you have denied your Master; 
you are cut off from the Church: the Judge will condemn you.” Is 
this distinction a verbal or a practical one? 

Now it is maintained in this book that the distinction is not only 
real but all-important, and that without a society, and an authority of 
some kind, morality remains speculative and useless. Every man is 
conscious that of the morality which he theoretically holds there is 
one part which he always and easily practises, and another part which 
he often neglects. He knows as well, theoretically, that the pleasure 
he finds in telling scandalous stories is vicious, as he knows that the 
taste for theft is vicious. Yet he falls sometimes into the one vice, 
and he is in no danger of falling into the other. The inducements to 
theft may be greater than the inducements to scandal, and yet he finds 
them easier to resist. Again, scandal is generally more inexcusable 
and may easily be more mischievous than theft, and yet when he has 
been guilty of scandal he feels only that he has done wrong, — nempe. 
hoc indocti , —when he has committed theft he feels that he is disgraced 
forever. The simple reason of this is, that theft is the vice which po¬ 
litical society exists to put down, and that laws are directed against it 

The civil union then, and positive laws, create a certain amount of 
practical morality. Certain principles of moral philosophy, through 
this organization, cease to be merely speculative, and become powe** 


T 


PREFACE SUPPLEMENTARY. 


fully operative. But it is not this organization only which has sued 
an effect Almost every organization which has an object calling for 
the exercise of any moral virtue creates in some degree the virtue it 
wants. It may be advisable to produce another example. The effect 
then of an army in creating moral virtue is most striking and manifest. 
It develops the virtues of manly courage and subordination, not in a 
few favorable cases merely, but with an almost irresistible power 
through its whole body. To face death, to obey one who has a right 
to command, two of the most difficult lessons, lessons which assuredly 
philosophers have seldom been found able effectually to inculcate, are 
taught by this organization with success almost uniform and absolute, 
even to people who bring with them no intellectual culture. Nor 
would the importance of this fact be at all diminished if it should be 
admitted that armies have at the same time in other respects a vicious 
influence. 

As Christ habitually compared his Church to a state or kingdom, so 
there are traces that its analogy to an army was also present to his 
mind. 

A story is preserved of a centurion who sent entreating his help for 
a sick servant, and when Christ promised to come and exert his power, 
deprecated, with an ingenuous embarrassment, an honor which seemed 
to him subversive of the distinctions of rank. He represented himself 
as filling a place in a graduated scale, as commanding some and obey¬ 
ing others, and the proposed condescension of one whom he ranked 
so immeasurably above himself in that scale shocked him. This spirit 
of order, this hearty acceptance of a place in a society, this proud sub¬ 
mission which no more desires to rise above its place than it will con¬ 
sent to fall below it, was approved by Christ with unusual emphasis 
and warmth. 

What states are to the moral virtues of justice and honesty, and 
annies to the virtues of courage and subordination, that the Christian 
Church is intended to be to all virtues alike, but especially to those 
which are nursed by no other organization, philanthropy, mercy, for¬ 
giveness, &c. When, therefore, the writer has spoken of these virtues 
as having b *en introduced among mankind by Christ, he does not mean 


PREFACE SUPPLEMENTARY. 


xi 


to say that they had nevei before been declared by philosophers to be 
viitues. He has expressly guarded himself, and that several times 
(see particularly p. 142), against this misunderstanding. He has ex¬ 
pressly said (p. 182) that the province of Christianity is not the prov¬ 
ince of the moralist. But the difference between stating the principles 
of morality and putting men into a condition to practise them, —be¬ 
tween introducing new truths to the lecture-room of the philosopher 
and introducing them to the markets, and councils, and homes of men, 

— this difference, though it seems to some of his readers vague or 
slight, seems to the writer vast and all-important He knows some¬ 
thing of what is in Seneca and Epictetus, and he duly respects the 
moralities taught there; but he “yields all blessing to the name of 
Him that made them current coin.” 

That Christ has improved the ideal morality of philosophers is not 
what the writer wishes to maintain, though probably it is true. Nor 
does he assert, what may also be true, that Christ has improved the 
moral practice of the average of men. But he asserts that Christ has 
greatly elevated the generally accepted and, as it were, the attainable 
standard of virtue, and further, that he has set in motion a machinery 
by which, properly used, this standard may be elevated still further. 
In what particular points the standard has been raised the writer has 
tried to define, doubtless with very imperfect success. One position, 

— namely, that Christ turned virtue from a passive abstinence from 
wrong into an active beneficence, —has been peremptorily denied, and 
passages have been produced to show that ancient philosophers also 
held beneficence to be an important virtue. No doubt they did, but 
Christ, instead of declaring beneficence to be a virtue, merges all virtue 
in beneficence. In his account of the judgment of men (Matt, xxv), 
all that we commonly call morality disappears ; not a word is said of 
honesty, purity, fidelity ; active beneficence is made the one and only 
test: those who have fed the hungry are accepted, those who have 
not done so are rejected. And the same view of virtue as necessarily 
and principally an activity is presented in the Parable of the Talents, 
where all that men possess is represented as capital belonging to the 
Supreme King, the interest of which He exacts under the heavies! 


xii 


PREFACE SUPPLEMENTARY. 


penalties. It may well be doubted whether anything approaching the 
rigor of this doctrine can be found even in the writings of philoso* 
pliers; and it is, in the opinion of the present writer, not doubtful that 
it was utterly strange to the popular and accepted moral code of the 
ancients. 

The question is likely to occur to many readers, If this was the ob 
ject of the institution Christ founded, has it not failed? Have man¬ 
kind been so disciplined by it that these virtues have become common, 
or are they as difficult and as rare as ever they were ? On the other 
hand do not these virtues, when they appear, appear as often outside 
the Christian Church as within its pale ? May it not even be said that 
at the present day the morality of Christians is of a languid and con¬ 
ventional sort, and that the freshest, most vigorous, and healthy virtue 
is displayed by some of those who are not Christians? To these ques¬ 
tions the writer would reply, The Christian Church has not failed alto¬ 
gether, but it has certainly failed grievously. It has made men to a 
certain extent philanthropical, it has made them for the most part 
ashamed of extreme revenge, it has considerably elevated and purified 
the female sex. In the Middle Ages it had great success in uniting 
different races. On the other hand it must be confessed, that since 
the Reformation it has acted rather as a dividing than a uniting influ¬ 
ence, and further, that through a great part of its history it has been a 
too consistent enemy of freedom. It has been over and over again 
the main support of tyranny; over and over again it has consecrated 
misgovernment, and retarded political and social progress; repeatedly 
it has suppressed truth, and entered into conspiracy with error and im¬ 
posture ; and at the present day it fails most in that which its Founder 
valued most, originality ; it falls into that vice which he most earnestly 
denounced, insipidity. On the other hand, noth'ng is plainer than 
the illustrious instances of virtue in men who are not Christians. We 
see around us those who have never had a Christian training, and 
others who have quarrelled with and renounced their Christianity, who 
yet exhibit all the tenderness, the devotedness, the ardent elevation of 
which Christ gave us the example, and along with it a freshness which 
Christians generally want 




















